“Don’t try the old heavenly rescuer with me, Gabe. I’ve got this one’s soul, signed for with his own name in his own blood, right here!”
The Archangel placed himself firmly between Henry and the Devil, a quiet smile of confidence playing about his angelic lips.
“Are you sure? Have you checked the signature?”
Nick Lucifer scowled darkly.
“Of course I’m sure. I knew this boy was a dreadful liar, so I exerted my powers and looked deep into his mind. I am certain he signed his real name to this agreement. I have no need to look. The tricks of one small boy are as nothing to the Lord of Darkness.”
Gabriel gave the worried Henry a light shove toward the Devil. “Then you may take him, Evil One. But woe betide you if you try to possess a soul under false contract. Beware the wrath from above. Personally I’d look at the signature if I were you.”
Nick Lucifer produced a pair of super bifocal reading glasses from the night air. Gabriel was not impressed with hellish conjuring—he had witnessed every trick in the book, and then some.
As Nick Lucifer scanned the parchment Henry felt his stomach begin to churn and his legs turn to jelly. The angel pointed a celestially manicured finger at the scrawl on the bottom line of the contract. “There, you see, signed in port wine; the boy never used blood.”
Satan glared foully at Henry as his mind raced back to the signing of the scroll. The billowing cloud of sulphur smoke, the wretched boy not wanting either of them to see him pierce his finger. Of course, the devious little worm had dipped the pen in port wine, it had been there on the table by him. Nick Lucifer sought all his Satanic powers of contractual understanding and suddenly he laughed triumphantly. It took the Devil to find the right loophole.
“Haha! But nevertheless, I have his signature here. Signed in blood, lemonade, tomato ketchup, or port wine, it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s the right signature.”
Gabriel tittered, very undignified for an angel.
“And is that the right signature?”
Nick Lucifer looked puzzled.
“Well, of course it is! Maybe it’s very scrawly, but lots of my clients had squiggly signatures: Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler, Blackbeard the Pirate. I’ve had famous doctors whose signatures you wouldn’t recognize, eminent lawyers, top politicians. What’s all the fuss over one silly schoolboy’s signature?”
Gabriel could not resist a heavenly smirk.
“All of their signatures could be compared against records and found to be true, badly written or not. But none of them were like Henry Mawdsley.”
“What?”
The archangel produced a celestial golden retractable pen and a junior cherub’s exercise book from under his wing. (He was also very good at conjuring in a heavenly fashion.)
“Henry, I’d like you to sign your name on the front of this book.”
Henry took the pen. He screwed up his eyes, his tongue stuck out one corner of his mouth, and he laboriously tried to do as he was bidden.
Gabriel held up the result for Satan’s inspection.
“See, it comes out different every time. Henry Mawdsley can neither read, spell, nor write. Read your own contract, paragraph B clause six, which states: ‘Whereby any mortal signing this contract must have complete knowledge of what he (the victim) is signing his name or affixing a recognized signature to. Furthermore, said victim must be deemed able to read in full the contract and scribe a genuine signature or make his mark, usually in the form of an X, or any other mark familiar as his personal monogram to all and sundry.’ Tut tut, it appears you’ve been fooled by a schoolboy.”
Smoke belched from Nick Lucifer’s eyeballs and ears. He drummed his hooves against the ground. Grabbing Henry he thrust a pen (also produced out of midair) into the boy’s grubby hand.
“Here, sign an X on the bottom of this form.”
With a look of fierce concentration Henry scrawled a backward Z.
Nick Lucifer tore a large chunk from his tail in fury.
Henry tried again, this time it was an upside down T.
Satan grabbed the pen and wrote with bold strokes at the foot of the scroll.
“Look! This is an X, and here’s another, quite simple, here’s another. Just two diagonal strokes crossing each other, can’t you even do that?”
Henry looked at the Archangel Gabriel.
“He’s beginning to sound like my teacher, Mrs. Benson. She says I’d try the patience of a saint; she never mentioned the Devil, though.”
Gabriel shook his head. A pinion feather stuck in his eye and he dabbed at it with a beautifully laundered handkerchief.
Nick Lucifer’s horns drooped. “But where does all this leave me?”
Gabriel put a protective arm around Henry. “Well where d’you suppose it leaves you, without a client and you can think yourself lucky you didn’t get this boy under false pretenses. It could have led to a shutdown on your burners for a year. Oh, just a moment.”
The angel extended his arms and clicked his fingers. The contract disappeared in a puff of extra-white smoke.
“That’ll save you putting it through your hellish parchment shredder. Now be off with you. I’m sure you’ve got lots of evil things to do down there without hanging around parks, wilting the grass all night.”
Henry waved as he went off hand in hand with the mighty archangel. “Goodbye, Mr. Lucifer. P’raps you would have been better off taking those Australian pesetas my dad sent me.”
“Yaaaaaggggghhhhh!”
Nick Lucifer stuffed his tail in his mouth, bit down hard on it and vanished in a cloud of purplish-green smoke.
Henry Mawdsley bid farewell to his friend and rescuer at the park gates. “Goodbye, Mr. Gabriel, and thanks for all you’ve done for me. If you’re ever in the neighborhood again why not drop into our house? My mom makes great angel cake, she’s always doing that when angels call to see us.” He jotted something down and handed it to Gabriel.
There was his name and address perfectly written.
As he watched the small figure skip off down the road, the Archangel Gabriel shook his head and smiled.
“Well, I knew Henry Mawdsley would lie to the very Devil himself, but fancy fooling Mrs. Benson and me!”
5
No doubt you’ve heard of Neptune,
and of the mermaids too;
or the legend of the Lorelei,
and the fabled naiads who
inhabit the world ‘neath the waters.
They don’t need to come up for air,
these spirits of the oceans and deeps,
with wavy trailing hair.
But far from the sea and its spirits
in a woodland lake or pond,
you may spy a piece of waterweed,
a harmless waving frond.
Stranger, beware, for the Grimblett lives there.
What is it? Nobody knows.
Just something time has forgotten
that lies underwater and grows.
Bad fortune to unbelievers
who think it’s just waterweed.
For Grimbletts were ever deceivers,
and very revengeful indeed… .
Bridgey
“Sure and aren’t ducks the greatest things in all the world!” Bridgey spoke her thoughts aloud to the white mists as they curled in wraithlike tendrils across the surface of the morning lake. The ducks ignored her completely, quacking and yammering the day’s business among themselves as they waddled and trundled fussily into the water, led by Rafferty, the leader of the drakes.