To say that Durosimi O’Stoat had not slept well would be an understatement. He had lain awake all night trying to fathom why his attempt to open a portal to the rest of the world had failed so dismally, despite all of his preparations and precautions. It made no sense! He couldn’t even blame Doc Willoughby, who had carried out his instructions to the letter. Something had gone wrong and he needed to know why; Durosimi did not like failure.
Daylight seemed to be fighting a losing battle, as it valiantly struggled through the fog of another Hopeless morning. Durosimi had no sooner succumbed to sleep, slipping gently into a delicious sense of comfortable numbness, and flirting with his first dream, when he was dragged rudely back to full consciousness by a serious of urgent raps upon his front door. Muttering and cursing, the sorcerer stumbled out of bed and padded his way downstairs, flinging open the door with a look that said, “This had better be good!”
Doc Willoughby was momentarily struck dumb by the apparition standing before him, resplendent in a crumpled nightshirt, hand-knitted pink bed socks, and a nightcap sitting at an angle that might have been considered jaunty, under other circumstances.
Before Durosimi could snarl an appropriately scathing matutinal greeting, Doc blurted out,
“It’s happened. We did it. We damned well did it.”
It took a second or two for the meaning of Doc’s words to sink in. Durosimi opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, then dashed back indoors to put on clothes more fitting to the occasion.
By the time Doc Willoughby and Durosimi reached their destination, a sizeable crowd had already gathered, to wonder at the strange gap that had appeared between the trees. News travels fast on Hopeless.
“What do you think this is?” asked Philomena Bucket, looking up into Mr Squash’s deep, wise eyes. “Could it be another portal opening up?”
“I can’t say that it’s anything like one that I have ever seen,” admitted the Sasquatch. “It is almost as though someone has torn a hole in the air. And I really don’t like the thin green mist that’s leaking from it.”
“I noticed that as well,” said Rhys Cranham, who, until little more than a year ago had been the island’s Night-Soil Man. “It reminds me of whatever it is that’s swirling about at the bottom of the sinkhole at Pooh corner.”
A shiver went down Philomena’s spine. Although she was no wiser than Rhys, with regard to the contents of the sinkhole in the Night-Soil Man’s garden, this did not sound at all good.
Lingering at the rear of the crowd, Durosimi looked upon the strange rip in the fabric of the morning with mixed feelings.
“I can’t believe that we really managed to do this,” said Doc excitedly.
“Be quiet, you fool,” hissed Durosimi, glaring at his companion. If looks could maim, Doc would been carried home in several small boxes that day.
“Surely…” began Doc, but was roughly silenced by Durosimi, who drew him away, out of earshot of the crowd.
“No one must know that I… that we are responsible for doing this,” he rasped. “Do you understand? If that thing really is a portal, don’t expect it to take you anywhere that you might want to visit.”
Doc looked confused, and asked, “Then where does it lead to?”
Durosimi drew a deep breath. “I dread to think,” he replied.
That evening, a council of war was held in The Squid and Teapot.
“We need to keep people well away from there,” said Mr Squash. “I can bang some stakes into the ground and fence the area off, just to be on the safe side”
”Do you really think that it’s dangerous?” asked Rhys.
Before the Sasquatch could answer, Philomena said, “Mr Squash is right. That hole in the atmosphere is a total anomaly. It’s best that we err on the side of caution.”
“In that case, maybe we should get a few volunteers to take turns keeping an eye on it,” said Reggie Upton. “Ideally we should have someone watching the thing around the clock. I could put a rota together, if you like.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” said Rhys. “You never know, we might even get Durosimi to help out.”
“Oh, yes,” observed Philomena drily. “Perhaps he could patrol the area on a flying pig.”.
Despite Philomena’s scepticism, and much to everyone’s surprise, Durosimi did indeed agree to be part of the volunteer group charged with keeping watch over ‘The Anomaly’, as everyone was now calling it. In fact, he had even put his name forward to do all of his shifts at night, secretly reasoning to himself that this would provide an excellent opportunity to study, without disturbance, and at close quarters, the result of his recent foray into Etruscan magic.
“He’s up to something,” said Philomena to Mr Squash, when she heard the news. “Maybe someone should be watching the watcher.”
To be continued…