Category Archives: Hopeless Tales

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Hopeless Tales, Tales from the Squid and Teapot

The Strange Visitor

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Story by Martin Pearson, ghost of Lady Margaret D’Avening by Cliff Cumber

The snuggery of The Squid and Teapot glowed in the cosy warmth of a blazing log fire. It was the end of a long and tiring day, and the landlord, Bartholomew Middlestreet, was glad to take the weight off his feet. He was sitting with his wife, Ariadne, and their friends, Philomena Bucket and Reggie Upton, who both lived at the inn. Drury, the skeletal hound, had invited himself in, and was snuffling and snoring on the fireside rug. Bartholomew could not have felt happier. In such cordial company, generously lubricated by a few tankards of ‘Old Colonel’, even the miserable climate of the island and its attendant horrors could be forgotten for a few hours.

“Gosh!” exclaimed Reggie Upton, “it is the end of October already. Do the islanders usually celebrate Halloween?”

Ariadne laughed derisively.

“What would be the point?” she asked. “It’s Halloween every day on Hopeless.”

“Yes, but you know what I mean,” said Reggie. “People have always liked to sit around a roaring fire and tell scary stories at this time of year.”

“I saw the makings of a good scary story yesterday,” broke in Philomena. Her voice was a little slurred. “Father Stamage climbed out of his hat, yawned, scratched his arse, then went back to bed.”

It was not particularly funny, but everyone laughed. Even Drury managed to emerge from his slumbers sufficiently to wag his bony old tail.

“Steady on,” said a voice. “I might be dead but I am certainly not deaf.”

An annoyed Father Stamage had thrust his ghostly head through the wall.

“And for your information,” he added, crossly, “I have never knowingly scratched my… scratched myself in front of a lady.”

“Ah, go on with you, Father,” said Philomena, ignoring the priest’s displeasure. “Aren’t you ghosts supposed to be celebrating, or something, this evening?”

“The only celebrating I will be doing,” said Stamage, imperiously, “is Mass, with Lady Margaret.  It’s All Hallows Day tomorrow and it’s only a pity that we have to mark the occasion in the privy.”

Lady Margaret D’Avening, also known as the Headless White Lady, famously haunted the stones that had been used to build the inn’s flushing privy, and was not able to venture very far from them.

“I could prise out a block for her to haunt, and put it somewhere more appropriate,” offered Bartholomew.

“It is not worth your trouble,” said the ghostly Jesuit, the landlord’s generosity driving all annoyance from his voice. “Besides, I think Lady Margaret feels at home in the privy. She doesn’t enjoy travel very much.”

With that Father Stamage disappeared, probably to return to the comfort of his hat – his beloved Capello Romano – and once more wander the hallowed corridors of his old alma mater, Campion Hall, in Oxford.

“Well, as far as I am concerned Halloween wouldn’t be the same without a ghostly story or two. Does anyone know any? – and I mean real stories this time,” said Reggie markedly, eyeing Philomena.

The barmaid smiled mischievously and said,

“Well, I do… but it’s more of a poem really, I suppose, called The Strange Visitor. Granny Bucket taught it to me years ago.”

“Let’s hear it, then” urged Ariadne.

Philomena settled herself into her seat, and began, her Irish lilt becoming broader and more pronounced with each word. She spoke slowly, and as the verse progressed, the fire seemed to die down a little, and shadows gathered around her.

“A woman was sitting at her reel one night;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of broad, broad feet, and sat down at the fireside;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of small, small legs, and sat down on the broad, broad feet;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of thick, thick knees, and sat down on the small, small legs;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of thin, thin thighs, and sat down on the thick, thick knees;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of huge, huge hips, and sat down on the thin, thin thighs;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a wee, wee waist, and sat down on the huge, huge hips;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of broad, broad shoulders, and sat down on the wee, wee waist;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of small, small arms, and sat down on the broad, broad shoulders;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a pair of huge, huge hands, and sat down on the small, small arms;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a small, small neck, and sat down on the broad, broad shoulders;
And still she sat, and still she reeled, and still she wished for company.

In came a huge, huge head, and sat down on the small, small neck.

‘How did you get such broad, broad feet?’ quoth the woman.
‘Much tramping, much tramping’.

‘How did you get such small,  small legs?’
‘Aih-h-h!–late–and wee-e-e—moul’.

‘How did you get such thick, thick knees?’
‘Much praying, much praying’.

‘How did you get such thin, thin thighs?’
‘Aih-h-h!–late–and wee-e-e–moul’.

‘How did you get such big, big hips?’
‘Much sitting, much sitting’.

‘How did you get such a wee, wee waist?’
‘Aih-h-h!–late–and wee-e-e–moul’.

‘How did you get such broad, broad shoulders?’
‘With carrying broom, with carrying broom’.

‘How did you get such small, small arms?’
‘Aih-h-h!–late–and we-e-e–moul’.

‘How did you get such huge, huge hands?’
‘Threshing with an iron flail, threshing with an iron flail’.

‘How did you get such a small, small neck?’
‘Aih-h-h!–late–wee-e-e–moul’.

‘How did you get such a huge, huge head?’
‘Much knowledge, much knowledge’.

‘What do you come for?’

Before Philomena was able to deliver the last line, a wailing banshee emerged from the chimney, burst into the snuggery and screamed at the top of her voice,

“I HAVE COME FOR YOU!”

Everyone quailed visibly and drew back; even Drury yelped in alarm and slunk into the corner.

“For goodness sake Granny,” shouted Philomena, “that is not funny.”

“Oh, I think it is” cackled the ghost of Granny Bucket. “You should see your faces.”

“My dear Mistress Bucket,” said Reggie, regaining his composure and straightening his regimental tie. “Another shock like that and I’ll be a ghost myself.”

“Then I think you all need another drink,” laughed Granny. “I only wish that I could have one meself. Happy Halloween, everybody.”

Hopeless Tales, Mrs Beaten

Mrs Beaten’s guide to afternoon tea

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By Nimue Brown

You will of course want to have afternoon tea. It is one of the hallmarks of a civillised society and absolutely essential. I shall guide you through this process.

Firstly you will require a table and chairs. If you have to make do in this regard, focus your attention on a good tablecloth. This will disguise many things, including unseemly table legs, stray tentacles and anything you are obliged to hide under the table. Good crockery is an asset, but I fear you will struggle to get anything to match. You may cheer up your table with some nice flowers. Be sure to find out in advance of your tea party whether the flowers are poisonous, venomous, hallucinogenic or inclined to attack in other ways.

It is possible to make decent herbal teas from a number of plants that grow on the island. I know, this is a horrifying assertion. There can of course be no milk or cream in such a tea, but if you’ve seen what comes out of the small cows, or for that matter the donkeys, you might consider this a blessing. Donkey milk is an acquired taste.

Further difficulties arise should you wish to serve cake, buttered toast, or biscuits with your tea. Almost no wheat is grown on the island. What grains we have cannot be relied upon and I am told that the interesting moulds that grow on them add to both the flavour and your chances of seeing something wholly unexpected. It is, I am afraid to say, very difficult to make cake out of seaweed. It is possible to make a sort-of biscuit thing that will not make you outright weep with disappointment.

One of the few things you can rely on here is meat. It isn’t always easy to come by, but for richness and lusciousness, it cannot be beaten. (That was my one joke, I hope you appreciated it.) There are few things that cannot be substituted for a really good cut of meat. Even jam. Made a cake but have no filling? Meat. Need a pie filling? Meat. And if you are trying to coax a gentleman to take tea with you, then you won’t go far wrong if you offer him some hot meat with plenty of stuffing. 

I do apologise, I seem to have become rather over-excited and may need to sit down for a moment.

Hopeless Tales, Tales from the Squid and Teapot

Charlatan!

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By Martin Pearson

Had this latest half-dozen ‘Tales from the Squid and Teapot’ been a Netflix mini-series, not only would I be extremely rich, but each episode would have been prefaced with the words ‘Previously on…’, based upon the assumption that even the most dogged follower might have lost the thread (and indeed, the will to live) after such a long and rambling plot. So…

In previous tales it was revealed that the sorcerer, Durosimi O’Stoat, using a mixture of drugged ale and magic, had enslaved six young men in order to shift enough rocks to re-open the route to The Underland. Only Septimus Washwell had escaped, due mainly to the fact that he had, as a gesture of solidarity with his wife, given up alcohol for the duration of Mirielle’s pregnancy. While the other slaves toiled, zombie-like beneath the earth, Septimus returned to his family and friends, having no idea as to where he had been.

It was fortunate – albeit temporarily –  for the five remaining slaves that Trickster, in the guise of a huge, demonic toad, decided to seriously upset his old sparring-partner, Durosimi. That was how The Lost Boys, as we will now call them, escaped Durosimi’s power, to be hospitalized at the Orphanage until they recovered what was left of their wits.

Durosimi, fearing the consequences of the islanders of Hopeless learning the full extent of his treachery, decided to put an end to his erstwhile slaves. When the Lost Boys were walking along the beach, returning to the dubious comforts of ‘The Crow’, he conjured a thick and mysterious fog that seeped into their very souls, and served to lure them into the arms, not to say teeth, of some particularly vicious, but vocally pleasing, sirens.

Septimus, meanwhile, had found an unlikely ally in Trickster, who by now had possessed the body of one Erasmus Cam, the son of a wealthy merchant who lived in Newhaven, Connecticut. Make no mistake, Trickster’s apparent altruism had little to do with Septimus’ welfare, and everything to do with the long-running cat-and-mouse game that he was playing with Durosimi. Posing as a stage hypnotist, Trickster/Erasmus agreed to hypnotize Septimus and bring his memory back… and now you are up to date.

Septimus gazed into the mesmeric eyes of Erasmus Cam and thought to himself,

“This is definitely not going to work.”

“Yes it is,” said Trickster, quite forgetting that the owner of his current meat-suit was not supposed to be telepathic.

Suddenly panic-stricken that the elegant young man standing in front of him was able to dredge the darkest depths of his psyche, Septimus immediately resolved to try and not think of anything remotely embarrassing or intimate. As most will realise, such a resolution is worse than useless, and his mind was suddenly awash with a plethora of words and images that would have made a sailor blush. As it happened, these things meant nothing to Trickster, who had been present at the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, witnessed the worst excesses of the Roman Empire, slyly drifted through the caverns of the Hell-Fire Club, and attended several clandestine parties in Number 10, Downing Street.

Trickster was sure that it would be something of a fait accompli that Septimus would succumb to his hypnotism. After all, he had been around for eternity in various forms, and had confounded thousands, from the legendary Herakles to England’s King George lll. But something was not right. Either Septimus was unusually resistant to his powers, or this latest form he had taken, the meat-suit called Erasmus Cam, was beginning to falter already. So much for good looks and elegance! It was suddenly apparent that Erasmus was much weaker than Trickster had expected. He was even frailer than Mozart had been! Trickster had to get this hypnotism thing over and done with as quickly as possible, before the wretched creature fell to pieces entirely, which would be embarrassing, to say the least.

“You are getting sleepy… listen to my voice,” croaked Erasmus, in increasingly weakened tones.

“Nothing is happening yet,” said Septimus.

“Pah! I think that you are no more than a charlatan,” chirped in Mirielle, who had been standing in the shadows.

In his haste to get the job completed while Erasmus was still able to stand, Trickster had quite forgotten that Septimus had brought his wife along for moral support.

“No, no, it won’t be long now,” Trickster gave what he imagined to be a reassuring smile through Erasmus Cam’s rapidly sagging face muscles. “Nearly there… Septimus, you are getting sleepy…”

“No, sorry. I don’t think I am,” declared Septimus.

“Oh, for goodness sake!” snapped Trickster, losing his temper.

“Charlatan!” repeated Mirielle, “Come on Septimus, we have wasted far too much time here,” and with that, bundled her husband out through the door.

Trickster could only look on helplessly as the last few vestiges of strength left his meat-suit and, falling to the ground, Erasmus Cam was no more.

A moment later an opportunistic crow flew down, aiming to assess how many meals the human might provide before it was taken away.

Seizing his chance, Trickster evacuated the corpse of Erasmus and slipped into the crow. It would not provide a feathery meat-suit for very long, but would, at least, give him the opportunity to fly to some other part of the island, where he could find a new host.

“That poor young man,” said Philomena Bucket. “He survived a shipwreck, only to die unexpectedly a few days later. I wonder what the cause was.”

“We shall never know,” said Reggie Upton. “In the midst of life we are in death, and all that.”

Philomena nodded.

“It seems that Mirielle and Septimus were talking to him just a short while before he died,” she said. “They both said that he was acting strangely.”

“If everyone who acted strangely on Hopeless keeled over and died, the island would be empty in a week,” observed Reggie with a wry smile.

“It is a mystery what happened to those five lads,” said Doc Willoughby, eyeing his empty glass. “They were walking the coast path to The Crow one minute, and gone the next.”

“I imagine that they were probably swept away by a freak wave,” said Durosimi unconcernedly, pouring the Doc another generous glug of single-malt. “These things happen. And what of young Washwell? Is he still suffering from amnesia?”

“It seems so,” said the Doc, “He even tried using a hypnotist, but the poor fellow died half-way through the procedure, or so I’m told.”

“How sad,” drawled Durosimi.

“Speaking as a medical man,” declared the Doc importantly, “I think that Washwell’s memory is gone for good.”

 “I sincerely hope so,” thought Durosimi, “for his sake and mine.”

It was the very end of October, and a bitter wind raged through the city of Newhaven, Connecticut. Jeremiah Cam sat at his desk in Hillhouse Avenue and re-read the letter for the hundredth time. It was creased and, in several places, fresh tear stains blotched the ink, but it did not matter. Jeremiah knew the words by heart.

My Dear Father,

It is, with a heavy heart, that I have to inform you that my physicians in Switzerland have confirmed that there is no known cure for my affliction, and that I should put my affairs in order with all haste.

In view of this, I have resolved to return home for the last time, and spend my remaining few months with you in Connecticut. At my demise I wish to be buried in the family plot, next to my darling mother.

I have contacted your employee, Captain Nathaniel Stonehouse, and he has promised me a berth in the schooner ‘Rosie’, which will be, I understand, carrying a cargo of barrels of English cider. The vessel is due to dock in Newhaven no later than mid-September.

Do not be despondent father, for I will have the compensation of sharing my final days in your company, which is worth more to me than a hundred years spent here in Europe.

September will soon be with us, and I look forward to our meeting, once more.

With fondest regards,

 Your loving son,

Erasmus.

Hopeless Tales, Tales from the Squid and Teapot

The Prestidigitator

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By Martin Pearson

“That young fellow,” declared Reggie Upton, “must have the luck of the devil himself.”

Philomena Bucket nodded in agreement.

“At least he survived the shipwreck, which no one else managed to do,” she said.

“And without a scratch,” said Reggie. “Why, even his clothes look as though they had been bought only yesterday.”

No one approved of good tailoring more than Reggie, but the well-dressed young man who had presented himself at the door of The Squid and Teapot, claiming to be the sole survivor of the recent catastrophe at Scilly Point, seemed almost too good to be true.

“Well, maybe he was just born lucky,” said Philomena. “Let’s just be thankful that things have turned out well for him.”

As related in the tale ‘Sea Fever’, the shipwreck, and the subsequent survival of the vessel’s only passenger, had been the handiwork of Trickster, and was all part of a plot to make Durosimi O’Stoat’s life totally miserable. While Durosimi would never win any prizes in a popularity poll, and had more than his fair share of dark secrets, the reason why Trickster was conducting a vendetta against him in particular is anybody’s guess. Trickster, of course, does not need a reason, and rarely has one. He would not be Trickster otherwise.

The well-dressed young man had introduced himself to all and sundry at The Squid and Teapot as one Erasmus Cam, prestidigitator and stage-hypnotist extraordinaire. As might be expected, this caused a small flurry of excitement among the patrons of the inn. While most had absolutely no idea what a prestidigitator is or does, the words ‘Stage-Hypnotist’ happily suggested the possibility of some distracting entertainment on the immediate horizon.  It would be an excuse to roll out the Edison Bell phonograph again, get Les Demoiselles Can-Canning, and persuade Bartholomew Middlestreet to crack open a fresh barrel of Old Colonel for the common good. This last matter usually involved a certain amount of negotiation, which invariably led to Bartholomew’s agreeing only on the condition that he and his wife, Ariadne, be allowed to perform their deathless, (and drastically cleaned-up for polite society) rendition of ‘Barnacle Bill the Sailor’.

Erasmus – who, of course, was Trickster, draped in his meat-suit – took little persuasion to take part in the event. This fitted his plans perfectly.

“It is, at times like this,” he mused, “that I really love the people of Hopeless, Maine.”

Whatever you may think of the strange ways of the islanders, there is no denying that these days they can arrange a concert at the drop of a hat. This, however, has not always been the case. It was the arrival of the Edison Bell phonograph, replete with a collection of wax discs, that gave them a glimpse of a world that few scarcely knew existed. Evenings of music, interspersed with poetry and monologues, soon formed a popular distraction from the horrors that abounded, and ‘Molly Malone’ became the unofficial anthem of the island, with its rousing refrain of ‘Alive, alive-o’. Later, when Les Demoiselles de le Moulin Rouge turned up on Hopeless, the entertainment stakes moved up a notch.  Their Can-Can, to the strains of Offenbach’s ‘Infernal Gallop’, inspired many to take up dancing themselves, and Les Demoiselles opened their famous dance studio to accommodate the growing demand. And now this latest arrival, a young man who claimed to be both a hypnotist and a prestidigitator (whatever that was supposed to be), promised to bring a real frisson of excitement to the proceedings in the town-hall.

The evening was not a disappointment. After the obligatory chorus of ‘Molly Malone’, Les Demoiselles changed the mood entirely, giving their usual spirited performance, even though their heavily pregnant leader, Mirielle, had been replaced by the unfortunately named Hilda Shambles. Hilda was an ex-orphanage girl who had been trained at the dance studio, and exhibited a rare talent for this particular variety of the Terpsichorean arts. Most anticipated, however, was the mysterious Erasmus Cam – or The Great Erasmus, as he styled himself that particular evening.

To the great relief of Philomena Bucket, Erasmus really seemed to be no more than a run-of-the-mill, second-rate illusionist, performing tricks with playing cards and silk scarves, which he drew from a borrowed top-hat. Given his miraculous escape from the shipwreck, Philomena’s fear had been that the young man possessed supernatural powers and had come to the island for nefarious purposes. Besides that, Drury, the skeletal hound, had taken an instant dislike to the magician and, unusually, had not come to the concert. Of course, the barmaid should have trusted Drury’s instincts,

Had it suited Trickster, Elephants could have materialised from thin air, dragons would have flown through the town-hall doors and angels and demons might have danced, hand in hand, to the strains of ‘Come Landlord Fill the Flowing Bowl’.  All that, however, would have been too much, and given the game away completely, for Trickster was not called Trickster for no reason. The biggest illusion that he pulled off that evening was to convince the audience that he was charming, good-natured and a very, very ordinary young man.

For the last part of his act, The Great Erasmus invited a member of the audience on to the stage, promising that he or she would be placed in a hypnotic trance. A grinning Norbert Gannicox swaggered up, confident that he was incapable of being hypnotised.

“I promise that I am not going to make you look foolish,” said Erasmus. “Instead I will regress you, and together we will dredge up memories from your very earliest childhood.”

Some of the audience looked crestfallen. They had hoped that Norbert might have been hypnotised into believing that he was a ballerina, or something equally undignified, and be forced to break into a pirouette or plie whenever he heard the word ‘rhubarb’.

The Great Erasmus was as good as his word, and before long the sceptical Norbert was reliving the events of fifty years earlier. This was so convincing that his elderly mother, who was sitting in the front row, was reduced to tears.

The evening ended, as usual, with another blast of the strangulated Irish tenor singing ‘Molly Malone’, via the miracle of the Edison Bell phonograph, and all that remained was to pack up, and for the audience to go home to their beds.

The Great Erasmus was stowing his playing cards and silk scarves safely in his borrowed top-hat when Septimus Washwell, nudged forward by his wife Mirielle, wandered up to him and shyly said,

“Erasmus, I wonder if you can help me, please?  I seem to have lost a couple of weeks of my life. Do you think that you would be able to help me get them back?”

Septimus was referring, of course, to the time not long ago, when he had been a slave, spell-bound and drugged, and in thrall to Durosimi O’Stoat.

Trickster shivered with delight in his meat-suit. That had been even quicker than he had hoped.

“Of course I will,” he smiled. “It would be a pleasure.”

Hopeless Tales, Mrs Beaten

The Horrors of Hopeless, Maine

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By Nimue Brown

Good evening. It is my unfortunate task to try and prepare you a little for life on Hopeless, Maine. I must warn you that this is a terrible place, full of dreadful, horrible things. Many of which really are too terrible to describe. I will do my best to prepare you for the dire things that you may expect to encounter and while I shall try to speak circumspectly, the more delicate amongst you should be warned that you may struggle with what I have to say. Make sure that you have your smelling salts to hand, and if you need to unlace an excessively tight corset, please do so discreetly so as not to cause anyone else to swoon in an embarrassing manner.

Prepare yourself for the awfulness of collars and cuffs. There is so little sunlight here that laundry cannot be sunbleached, and greying occurs all too often. Further, there are very few good sources of starch, making it desperately difficult to keep collars in good, stiff positions. You may be tempted to use night potatoes in this regard, but I advise against this. Night potatoes are horrid things, with glowing eyes and writhing tentacles, but the worst of it is that if you do not prepare them in exactly the right way, they can stain your clothes! I’m sorry, there’s really no gentler way of putting this to people.

You are probably used to much higher standards than it is possible to maintain here on the island. You will struggle, for example, to find anything suitable for washing your hair with. There are of course eggs, but eggs are often in short supply and you may be forced to make the ghastly choice between shiny hair, and making a cake. Do not use glass heron eggs. They work perfectly well, but your chances of losing a digit, or a limb to the glass heron are high and this offsets any good to your appearance that the egg might have achieved.

While a decent amount of cutlery has been salvaged from shipwrecks over the years, the island suffers a terrible lack of spoons. There is an ongoing spoon crisis, and you would do well to keep your spoons with you at all times. This seems to be the only way to keep them safe from whatever appalling entities make it their business to steal them. And as I’m sure you can see, it is difficult to run a good kitchen without spoons. No one wants the shameful indignity of having to drink soup from a bowl. 

Fabric is also in short supply. You will need your mending skills and will be obliged to accept lower standards in fashion and neatness alike. Your stain removal skills will often be called upon. When preparing sea monsters, it is all too easy to get sprays of dark substances onto one’s clothing and they are notoriously hard to remove. Since coming here I have had to improve my techniques for dealing with scorch marks, and blood stains as well. Keeping things clean is an ongoing struggle and you may well lose sleep over it. I myself lost a great deal of sleep last week regarding the amount of tearing my clothing suffered and the difficulty of repairing my best dress. So let that be a warning to you.

Hopeless Tales, Tales from the Squid and Teapot

Sea Fever

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By Martin Pearson

Sea Fever

“I must go down to the sea again,

To the lonely sea and the sky.

And all I ask is a tall ship,

And a star to steer her by.”

Philomena Bucket looked at Reggie Upton in surprise.

“Did you make that one up yourself?” she asked, admiringly. “It’s very good.”

“Good Lord, no” laughed Reggie. “It’s by a young chap named Masefield. He’s a bit of a poet who once persuaded me to buy a copy of one of his books. It was called ‘Salt Water Ballads’, and was full of that sort of thing. That particular poem came to mind after I saw the sailing ship that had floundered on the rocks, down by Scilly Point, yesterday.”

“Oh yes, I heard about that,” said Philomena. “Do you know if there were any survivors?”

“None that I have heard about,” replied Reggie, sadly. “I am fairly sure they would have made themselves known by now.”

It was true. Most newcomers to the island of Hopeless, Maine, seemed to turn up at the door of The Squid and Teapot eventually.  

Trickster looked down at his new meat-suit with approval. It had taken little effort to persuade the drunken sea captain to drive his ship on to the fog-bound rocks. Trickster was an old hand at things like that. More difficult was the task of ensuring that the well-dressed young man, who appeared to be the schooner’s solitary passenger, survived the catastrophe unscathed.  Trickster did not know, or indeed care, that the owner of the merchantman was, even then, waiting anxiously for his son to arrive on the quayside at Newhaven, Connecticut. All that the lad meant to Trickster was the means to a very desirable meat-suit; one that no one on the island had seen before.

“That chair has got four legs,” scolded Mrs Ephemery.  “Break it, and you’ll be sorry.”

The well-dressed young man flashed the landlady a charming smile and dutifully eased his weight forward, allowing the chair to sit squarely, once more, upon the floor of the inn.

It was such a pity that he had to frequent The Crow in order to conclude his business. Unfortunately, it would be to here, and not to the far more hospitable environs of The Squid and Teapot, that those lads, whom the islanders insisted on calling ‘The Famous Five’, would be returned, now that they had almost recovered from their ordeal at the hands of Durosimi O’Stoat. There was still the issue of their amnesia, of course, and that was something that Trickster wanted to put right. Naturally, this was not out of any sense of altruism, or wishing to help the Famous Five. It was purely a means of making Durosimi’s life a little more uncomfortable, for if the truth of their captivity was to get out, Durosimi would become even less popular than he was at present; it might even lead to violent retribution. One could but hope.

Trickster had no wish to physically harm Durosimi; he was perfectly content to do no more than create the circumstances which would provide the sorcerer with an occasional, but generous, helping of misery. If, on the other hand, a series of events should lead to Durosimi’s downfall, then so be it. In the meantime, he would linger here in The Crow, eat their lousy food, and wait to restore the memories that those five young men had so inconveniently mislaid. Like the best laid plans of mice and men, however, Trickster’s schemes do not always come to the pleasing conclusion that he has envisaged.

The Famous Five were, by now, deemed eligible for discharge from the Pallid Rock Orphanage, where they had been hospitalised for a week or so. It was with light hearts and optimism that they set off that morning, bound for their local inn, The Crow, where a welcome-home party had been arranged. To begin with all seemed fairly normal, or as normal as could reasonably be expected on Hopeless. It was after little more than a few hundred yards into their journey, however, that they noticed how the perennial fog, which wraps itself coldly around the island, seemed to be growing unusually thick, and stealthily creeping in from the sea with all the subtlety of a well-worn Gothic cliché. Despite this, the young men wandered into its chilly embrace with good spirits, laughing and singing with all of the exuberance of youth. It was only when other voices joined theirs that they paused to listen. These new songsters sweetened the air with pure and melodious harmonies, intoxicating and irresistible to those young ears. As one, the five turned and walked through the unrelenting fog to where the voices called them, totally bewitched and besotted. They stumbled over rocks, through soft sand and sucking mud, until the cold Atlantic lapped around their feet, but still they did not stop, drawn ever onward by the seductive siren-song. Not until the water had reached their chests, and insistent, unseen hands drew them beneath the waves with preternatural strength, did they realise, too late, their awful fate. It was only then that they beheld, with horror, the hideous creatures who had serenaded them.

A solitary figure stood in the already thinning fog. He knew that summoning the sirens would have its cost. There was always a price to be paid. He really hoped that the five fresh victims would be payment enough, but he had his doubts.

 Durosimi sighed, and wrapped his cloak tightly around him.

“It was necessary to do this,” he told himself. “That only leaves young Septimus Washwell to attend to now.”

As the day wore on, Trickster became more and more convinced that something was amiss, and that Durosimi was at the bottom of it. The Famous Five should have been back hours ago. Even Mr and Mrs Ephemery, who managed the inn, had given up on them, and was taking down the crude bunting that proclaimed “Welkum Home Famus 5”

With an angry kick, Trickster sent his chair spinning across the room, where it shattered into matchwood against the far wall. Freezing Mrs Ephemery’s spluttered protestations in mid-sentence with a wave of his hand, he strode out of The Crow in a rage, slamming the big oak door behind him.

“It is time to go to The Squid and Teapot,” he muttered. “At least there I can plot my revenge on O’Stoat in something resembling civilized comfort.”

Hopeless Tales, Tales from the Squid and Teapot

The Famous Five

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Story by Martin Pearson art by Tom Brown

“I would hope that Mirielle will now have the good grace to apologise to Septimus,” said Reggie Upton. “She did not believe him when he told her that he had amnesia, and now that those fellows have returned with the same symptoms, it proves that he was telling the truth.”

He paused for a few seconds, then added, “But, sadly, knowing Mirielle, as we both do…”

He let the sentence hang in the air, unfinished. The nod of agreement from Philomena Bucket was enough to tell him that there was no need to say more.

“It seems as though he got off lightly,” said Philomena. “Septimus is only suffering from memory-loss, whereas those other poor lads seem to have lost their reason altogether.”

“Hopefully it’s only temporary,” said Reggie. “Still, it’s a dashed mystery where they have been all this time, and to get into such a state.”

The reappearance of the five young men, who had been secretly enslaved by Durosimi O’Stoat, had caused quite a stir on the island. Most people had given them up for dead. When they eventually emerged, blank-eyed and brain-addled, having been subjected to a toxic mixture of drugged ale and Durosimi’s cloaking spell, they were deemed by some to be little more than walking corpses. Fortunately, Septimus Washwell’s refusal to drink the drugged ale had allowed him to escape after just three days, with nothing worse than having no recollection of where he had been.

It was generally decided that, rather than return them to their homes immediately, the young men should be temporarily housed in one of the empty dormitories of the Pallid Rock Orphanage, where the ghostly Miss Calder, and her equally ghostly assistant, Miss Toadsmoor, would be able to keep an eye on them, and monitor their progress around the clock. There was a certain downside to this arrangement, however, as both of these ladies are – as the word ‘ghostly’ might suggest – no more than shades, albeit friendly and helpful ones. As such, they would be unable to carry out the various physical tasks associated with nursing care. It had been hoped that Reverend Davies and his wife might be willing to lend a hand, but strangely, both had found their diaries to be unusually full for the foreseeable future.

Some might claim that it was purely a burst of community spirit that saved the day. My own view is that the main driving-force was curiosity. Whatever the reason, there was soon a constant flow of island residents, each eager to see, for themselves, the ‘Famous Five’, as the lads were now known, and every visitor was expected to do their bit to help. Such expectation was often greeted with dismay, but Miss Calder’s undisputed charm, coupled with her unnerving habit of absent-mindedly replacing her very pleasant facial features with that of a grinning skull, were enough to convince most that it would be wise to comply.

One person who managed to avoid carrying out nursing duties was Doc Willoughby, who insisted that he was visiting in his capacity as a medical professional, declaring that he would certainly be able to diagnose the problem and suggest a cure. Following a stream of important-sounding “Ahs” and “Hmms”, accompanied by a series of pokes and prods, he pronounced the five to have a rare and life-threatening condition, known to the medical world as Urtica dioica.

“Unfortunately,” he announced gravely, as he left, “there is no known cure.”

“Could you smell alcohol on his breath?” asked Miss Calder, as she watched the Doc wandering unsteadily down the pathway.

“Yes,” replied Marjorie Toadsmoor, with a flickering grin, “and he’s just diagnosed the lads to be suffering from stinging nettles. It must have been a bit of Latin that he heard somewhere, and it stuck!”

The two phantom carers shrieked with laughter, causing the hair of more than one passer-by to turn prematurely white.

Not everyone celebrated the return of the ‘Famous Five’ with enthusiasm.

For the past week Durosimi O’Stoat had been cowering beneath his bed-clothes, terrified that the huge demon toad that had foiled his plans to gain access to the Underland would pursue him. When Doc Willoughby came hammering on his door, bearing news of the reappearance of the five young men (whom he had recently diagnosed as having a nasty case of stinging nettles), the sorcerer was not thrilled. He realised that he had been made a fool of, and there was only one being who frequented Hopeless who was able to pull off such a stunt. Trickster!

To the Doc’s great disappointment, he was dismissed with unseemly haste, and not a mouthful of whisky for his trouble.  Still, he reflected, it was probably all for the best; when Durosimi was in this mood it was as well to be as far away from him as humanly possible.

Durosimi paced the floor, smouldering with anger, his mind racing.

Why had Trickster saved those youngsters? That was not his style; what could he up to?

Did he plan to use those five young men against him? That must be it. Well, two could play at that game. But no… that was not right.

Durosimi was well aware that, despite his magical skills, he was no match for Trickster. The old rogue was as old as time itself, and if he had you in his sights, then you were done for. But Trickster was not infallible, not by a long way; he made mistakes. He had even been chased, while in the guise of a white hare, over a cliff by a band of spoonwalkers (as was related in the tale ‘The Kindness of Spoonwalkers’).

Durosimi smiled to himself grimly. He would tread carefully around Trickster. But those young men – what was it that people were calling them? The Famous Five, they were his immediate problem, his weak link, his Achilles heel. Them, and the Washwell fellow. The effects of the ale and the cloaking spell would not last forever, and if the truth of their abduction was to get out, there would be condemnation and a thirst for retribution, which even he might have difficulty in controlling. All six of them needed to be silenced, and sooner rather than later.

“They must all disappear, and this time for good,” he said aloud, and the air around him grew icy.

Hopeless Tales, Tales from the Squid and Teapot

The Lost Boys

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By Martin Pearson

“The British Empire,” declared Reggie Upton, proudly, “is the greatest and most powerful that the world has ever seen. It is rightly called The Empire Upon Which The Sun Never Sets.”

“Pah!” exclaimed Mirielle D’Illay, dismissively. “That is just as well. No one would ever trust an Englishman in the dark.”

Reggie managed to stifle a smile, although his eyes twinkled with merriment. Despite Mirielle’s apparent Anglophobia, the old soldier could not help but like her. He had witnessed her vulnerability in recent weeks, when her husband, Septimus, mysteriously vanished. The patrons of The Squid and Teapot had scoured the island looking for the young man, but to no avail. When Septimus suddenly reappeared after a few days, having no memory of where he had been, Mirielle was torn between anger and relief. This was something that Reggie could understand and empathise with, for these were emotions that had plagued him a dozen or more times during his military career.

“Would you two please stop bickering,” groaned Philomena Bucket, totally misreading the situation. “We all need to focus our attention on what is important, as we are no closer to finding those lads who went missing from The Crow than we were a week ago.”

It was true. The young men seemed to have disappeared completely. While such occurrences were not rare on Hopeless, for five people to simultaneously go missing from the same place, and for no apparent reason, was a little odd.

“Philomena,” said Mirielle, gently, “we have looked everywhere. I cannot help but feel that those boys are a lost cause by now.”

“We shouldn’t give up,” said Philomena, defiantly. “I still think that Durosimi O’Stoat is behind all of this and I’d bet anything that he knows where they are.”

Philomena would have won her wager, for Durosimi did, indeed, know, but he was not likely to tell anyone; not about the hidden cave, or of the zombie-like slaves toiling deep beneath the surface of the island.  

For long years, Durosimi had been desperate to find a route to the Underland. He had stumbled upon vague rumours and references to the existence of such a place, but there had been nothing concrete, no first-hand accounts from explorers. Then that blasted Bucket woman, along with Gannicox the Distiller and Middlestreet from The Squid, had found a secret passageway that led to its entrance. Oh, it was so unfair, that this meddling witch should accidentally chance upon the very spot that he, a great and powerful sorcerer, had been seeking for decades. To make matters worse, the foolish woman had recently destroyed the tunnels before he could find a way of getting into them. She had deliberately made the magical cavern inaccessible to anyone, declaring it unsafe.  

Durosimi had fumed and brooded over this for months. Of course it was unsafe! It was meant to be unsafe! The Underland was no place for amateurs like the Bucket woman and her cronies to be tramping around. It was meant for the wise, for the initiated – for himself.

It had been Doc Willoughby who had inadvertently sown the seeds of hope that another way might be found to the Underland.

“I overheard the Bucket woman telling Ariadne Middlestreet that she had successfully destroyed the first hundred yards of something she called ‘the west tunnel’,” the Doc had confided, holding out his glass for a refill of whisky. “Although, I must admit, I have no idea what she was talking about. I thought that you might be interested, though.”

Durosimi had found it useful to invite Willoughby to his home occasionally, ply him with copious amounts of alcohol, and listen to the gossip circulating in the Squid.

“Hmm… it might be worthwhile to find out what she meant,” said Durosimi, his offhand tone in direct contrast with the excitement welling up inside him.

Metaphorical wheels were soon set in motion. It had not been too difficult to find a convenient means of ingress into the earth, and from there plot the line leading westward from The Squid and Teapot, to the portal of the Underland. Neither was it difficult for Durosimi to recruit some gullible young men to do the heavy lifting for him. The whole project, however, required great secrecy. Fortunately, Durosimi was very, very good at secrecy.

Of course, young Washwell had proved an annoyance, managing to escape as he did. Still, an annoyance was not necessarily a problem. Durosimi congratulated himself on securing the hidden cave with a cloaking spell, which also served to render his slaves totally unaware of where they were, or why.  Except for this small detail, everything seemed to be progressing well.

It was under the cover of foggy darkness, during the few days that fell between the waning of the old moon and the waxing of the new, that Durosimi went to check how the work was progressing. He carried with him a bag containing a few meagre rations; food must be running low by now, and those youngsters would need all of their strength for the task before them.

He wandered deep underground, down the steep pathway to where his slaves toiled. He noted, with satisfaction, that the dim lights he had set into the wall still glowed with an eerie luminescence. Despite this, the all-pervading silence told him that there was something wrong. Upon reaching the cavern where the work was meant to be going on, he found it deserted. The light in here was even poorer than in the passages, so Durosimi lit the lantern he had brought with him and held it aloft. It took a moment or two for his eyes to adjust to the comparative brightness, then he gasped in horror. What he had imagined to be a mound of rocks proved to be a huge toad, towering above him, warty and squat. The toad’s eyes glittered and regarded him with unbridled malevolence.

“You are not welcome here mortal,” it rasped, its wide slash of a mouth leering unpleasantly.

“My workers… what have you done with them?” said Durosimi, his voice trembling.

The toad said nothing, but flicked its long tongue disconcertingly close to Durosimi, deftly relieving him of the bag of food that he was carrying.

Durosimi froze. The next time that tongue came out, it could be the finish of him.

“Be gone, and do not return, unless you wish to join them,” said the toad.

Durosimi cautiously stepped away, not daring to turn his back on the repulsive creature until he was safely out of range of that awful sticky tongue. Then he ran. He ran until he was well clear of the cave, to fall gasping and retching upon the doorstep of his house.

What had those lads unearthed? What was that awful thing?

Well, it was a demon, that was for sure, but none that he had ever heard of. These thoughts rushed through Durosimi’s mind in a torrent. He knew his own limits and decided, there and then, that it would be nothing but folly to go back into the cave. That thing had probably lived down there for years – hundreds of years, or maybe more. Discretion, Durosimi decided, was, on this occasion, the better part of valour.

Deep beneath the surface of the island, the toad stirred. It shook its huge body and, if anyone had been foolish enough to be an onlooker, they would have been more than a little surprised to see it start to shrink, gradually becoming as diminutive and shapeless as a deflated balloon. In that half-light they would have witnessed a figure lifting itself from the rocks around its feet, and casually dust itself down.

“Well, that was fun,” chuckled Trickster, smugly. “It has been far too long since O’Stoat was last put in his place.”

He looked about him at the five young men who stood unmoving in the shadows. They were still zombiefied, Trickster noticed, but there would be no permanent harm. Well… probably not, but that was not his problem.

“Come on,” he said, “it’s your lucky day, lads. After that satisfying little episode with O’Stoat I’m feeling unusually generous. Let’s all get out of here now –  and I haven’t visited The Crow for ages.”

Hopeless Tales

The forlorn bird

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Art by Michael Zawacki, story by Nimue Brown

The storms often bring something strange. Giant sea monsters wash up on our beaches, dead and dying, to become food for the crows. Small, broken things litter the high tide mark, tiny glimpses into other worlds tangled through strands of seaweed. In the violence of nature there is bounty for the scavengers, human and other.

I have never seen her like before. I watched her twisting out of the sky, fighting the rage of a late afternoon that meant to slaughter what it could. Beauty comes this way so seldom, and I do not know how many times I have seen some lovely thing die here, cast onto these hard shores.

She fought the wind, this bird, even as she came careening down from the clouds. I could see her struggle, a wild fight for life that refused despair or defeat. My heart ached for her desperate plight. I did not want to watch her die, and yet I could not bring myself to look away.

As she came closer I realised how big she was, the span of her wings far wider than my open arms. She passed over me, beyond my reach, every feather visible to me. There was a lustre in her, a brightness that even this foul weather could not dampen.

While the wind toyed with her, she slowed her fall, and came down onto the clifftop, stumbling but not wounded. Her landing disturbed a horde of screaming geese, and I was half afraid they might take their ire out on me, but they calmed under the gaze of the newly arrived bird – a thing I would not have thought possible had I not seen it myself.

Then she sang. An inhuman voice, with something of the flute in it and something of the shore on a gentle day. I swear the waves softened at the sound of it, and the wind dropped away. Even the ferocious stormclouds above us seemed less menacing somehow. She sang, and I remembered moments of sweetness from the past, and times when I had almost been happy. I wept for lost companions and for my own loneliness, and I was not ashamed of the weeping.

When at last she left me, I felt strangely peaceful. The heavy clouds thinned above me, and the sea tossed with far less anger than before. Her flight was as lovely as her song, full of the delicacy of her wondrous feathers, and for a while she filled the sky.

Only as she left did I understand that she had chosen to come to this inhospitable place. She had not been falling out of control as I first believed. She had journeyed here to share a little of herself, and had then travelled on to some other place, or time or soul where her song was needed. I felt honoured, humbled by this idea. I do not know why she chose me, for I see nothing in myself that could be worthy of her. There is only one response I can therefore make, which is to become something more, something filled with those feathers and haunted by that song.

You can find out more about Mike’s art here – https://www.zawackiart.com/ His work is amazing and I heartily recommend checking him out.

Hopeless Tales, Tales from the Squid and Teapot

The Cloaking Spell

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By Martin Pearson

Skeletal dog image by Tom Brown

There had been no small amount of panic when it was discovered that Septimus Washwell had disappeared. No one had spotted hide nor hair of him for three days. The ever-resourceful Philomena Bucket had deduced that, by using the combined talents of Drury and Father Stamage, it should be possible to track the young man down and bring him safely home. And so, while Father Stamage haunted the depths of his Capello Romano (in which he was able to serenely wander the venerable corridors of his Oxford College, Campion Hall) Drury steadfastly followed Septimus’ trail to a cavern, its slender opening almost lost among a barren scattering of rocks. For every step of the way he had carried the priest’s hat firmly between his teeth. The plan, from then onwards, was that the ethereal wraith of Father Stamage would be able to find Septimus, bring news back of his whereabouts and alert a rescue party.

Bartholomew Middlestreet had never seen Drury looking quite so dejected. The skeletal hound slunk into the bar of The Squid and Teapot, where he dropped the slightly-chewed black hat that he had been carrying.

Bartholomew picked it up and hung it on the coat stand.

“I take it that there was no sign of Septimus” he said, doubt in his voice.

“Not at all,” the hat replied.

A second or two later the wispy figure of Father Stamage began to materialise from the depths of his beloved Capello Romano.

“I ventured into the cavern as far as I was able,” said the phantom priest, “But there was no sign of the lad – but I would bet my boots that he was in there somewhere. Drury is too good a tracker to have made a mistake.”

Hearing this compliment, the old hound cheered up visibly, and rattled off to his favourite corner, where he settled down on an equally favourite blanket, and immediately fell into a deep, and somewhat noisy, sleep.

Durosimi O’Stoat was sitting at his desk, deep in thought, his eyes closed and his mouth lightly resting upon his steepled fingers. He had no qualms about ensnaring those young men, now toiling far beneath the earth. If they were gullible enough to be taken in by his flattery and empty promises, then they deserved whatever fate befell them. It had been straightforward enough to dull their minds with drugged ale and a simple spell or two, but less easy had been the task of concealing their whereabouts. There would be a hue-and-cry when their absence was noticed, and doubtless that blasted abomination, Drury, would be enlisted to sniff them out. The cloaking spell that Durosimi had cast would only be effective for a dozen yards or so, but hopefully that would be enough to baffle the eyes and nose of Drury.   

There was a flaw in Durosimi’s scheme which not even he could have foreseen. I have mentioned, in an earlier tale, that, with fatherhood on his horizon, Septimus had become unusually uxorious. His every thought and action had been with Mirielle and their unborn child in mind. It was inevitable, therefore, that when Mirielle reluctantly eschewed all alcoholic refreshment, for the sake of the baby’s wellbeing, Septimus felt duty-bound to follow suit. Since his capture this had been especially difficult, in the thirsty confines of Durosimi’s mine. It was hard to resist drinking from the barrel of ale which had been left for all to enjoy.  But resist he did, and within a few days, clarity dawned in his addled mind once more, releasing him from the drugs and binding-spell with which Durosimi had hobbled him. There seemed to be no hope for his fellow captives, however, now reduced to little more than blank-faced automatons, toiling unceasingly in the greasy lamplight. Bidding them a silent farewell, Septimus staggered into the pale, foggy embrace of a Hopeless dawn, little knowing that Durosimi had one more trick up his sleeve; with each step, all memories of his captivity, and its causes, were erased from the young man’s mind.

If Septimus had expected to receive a hero’s unconditional welcome upon returning home, he was to be disappointed. While Mirielle was pleased, and not a little relieved, to see her husband, she made it more than clear that she could not accept his claim of temporary amnesia, and having absolutely no idea of his recent whereabouts. His parents were equally sceptical, and only Philomena Bucket regarded his story with any credibility. Whenever anything suspicious occurred on the island, she was inclined to attribute it to the devious deeds of Durosimi O’Stoat.

It was just a day or so later, when talking to Reggie Upton, that Philomena became even more convinced that the sorcerer was once more up to no good. Reggie had been out and about, on one of his flâneuring expeditions. He had wandered aimlessly, in the best tradition of what Philomena insisted on calling ‘flanneling’, until he eventually found himself sampling the ale on offer at ‘The Crow’. The talk in the inn that day had been of five young men, who had mysteriously gone missing a week earlier.

“Dashed rum affair, if you ask me,” said Reggie. “I know that it’s not unusual for chaps to go awol from Hopeless, but five at once from ‘The Crow’ is seriously out of order.”

Philomena nodded,

“If only Septimus could remember where he was for those few days, it might explain things,” she said, then added, “it’s a pity Father Stamage didn’t know where Drury had taken his hat.”

“Wouldn’t Drury remember?” asked Reggie.

They looked at what appeared to be a pile of bones snoring raucously in the corner.

“The trail would have gone cold by now,” said Philomena, “and if I know Drury, he’s forgotten all about it.”

The bones made a few soft whimpering noises, and an osseous leg emerged from the pile and began twitching furiously. Drury was busily dreaming of chasing spoonwalkers.

“Is there anything we can do,” asked Reggie.

“Those lads are somewhere on the island,” said Philomena, “and I’m fairly sure that Durosimi O’Stoat knows where.”

“Then that is where we will start to look, m’dear,” said Reggie, twirling his moustache. “The game is afoot!”