Fisher And The Bears Read online

  “He and a lot of the bears do the end of the pier show, yes.” I gave it some thought. “Maybe they are reviving the old Pierrot Chorus as one of the turns.”

  “I was wondering more if working under the lights might have caused dehydration and confusion.” Idris said softly. “But you know what he is like. Showmen and their secrets. I think you should probably go talk to him. He is on a drip, getting fluids, he can have as much water as he wants to drink. But we will be looking after him for a while.”

  So I went to talk to Dad. He was in a hospital gown and laying on a bed. He did not look happy, but he had all his marbles. He smiled with something that might have been a blush.

  “What can you remember?” I asked softly.

  “Nothing.” He said. “I remember getting ready to rehearse for the old folks home. Trying to decide what costume to wear, and a delivery ringing through and... That as they say is it until I was here.”

  “So I'm guessing you decided on the Pierrot costume. A little bit of the old Seaside Charm.” I said. “With none of the horror of the Minstrel.”

  “I'm not sure I did.” He whispered. “I thought I had a dinner jacket and a black tie special. Look, I know I am meant to be out of the old trade, and I know you have your hands full. But I really, really, really think this might be something we need to look into.”

  “You think?” I sighed. “Okay, so Jenny was right. There is always something. Always something like this.” I smiled. “She thinks it is the bears. But it's the curse isn't it?”

  “King Family Curse. First of the three edicts.” He agreed. “Would you be so kind as to check on the theatre? And the saw?”

  “Your toy is locked away.” I said. “I put it in the shed. The bear proof shed. It is utterly safe.”

  “No it is not. But it is contained.” Dad whispered. “Good. And thank you Fisher.” He lay back and closed his eyes. “I will of course be monitoring the situation. On television.” He grinned. It was a fake grin. “It's only overnight. I'll be fine for the Biddies. I will be in excellent form long before the Autumn Jamboree.”

  “I know.” I said. “Just relax, be calm, and I will go look in on the theatre.” I paused. I was aware of some figures lurking at the doorway. “We will.” I corrected. I had told the bears to wait in the van. That only six or seven followed me was pretty good going for them.

  *

  I didn't have time to go running around the hospital searching for bears. I pulled the Bosun Whistle from my pocket and warbled 'Office on Deck'. Any bears who didn't come running to that would know to stay with Dad. I waited a few minutes and Doctor Idris stepped aside to avoid the pack of bears that was suddenly converging on the corridor. A few had bandages wrapped around their noses and one had managed to plaster cast his own head, but mostly they seemed not to have got into too much trouble. They all snapped to attention.

  “Dad is going to be fine, but he wants us to check the theatre is okay.” I said. “He thinks this might be a family thing.”

  “What kind of family thing?” Mac asked, worried.

  “First tier.” I said.

  “Ooh” Said the bears.

  “Come on.” I said, waving for them to follow me out to the van. “Paws to yourself!” I warned a bear who seemed to have the temptation to press a button on an expensive looking piece of equipment. He let out a sigh and followed me.

  We could not drive right up to the theatre. There is a good reason it stages end of the pier shows. We parked by the sea front and I used my staff key to open the gate to the pier. We walked as a group down the pier. Past the shooting gallery, bait shop, and other little distractions to the Shilling Theatre at the end of the pier. To the stage door. I opened up and we stepped into the echoing cathedral of light entertainment.

  A lot of the bears either work for the theatre full time, or do the occasional turn for the variety nights. Bears have a long history in the entertainment industry. Their habit of making anything imaginable from junk, creating gadgets of clockwork, pulleys and springs, and a love of dressing up and you have a very eager workforce for set design, stage illusions and so forth. On stage they were used a lot in the background, to render the illusion that shallow sets stretched into the distance. Magicians loved to work with bears who would tinker away with tricks to make them ever more impressive and to make the impossible appear to happen through a liberal use of crawl spaces and clockwork mechanisms.

  The audience loved any show with the latest ursine innovation because it added the very real possibility of a piece of stage dressing exploding with a boing of springs and a wallop of counterweights, sending the bear who had been hiding within flying over the auditorium with a cheery wave and a shower of shrapnel.

  There were other performers and other staff too of course. The bears were not in a monopoly, but their presence could not be missed, and the character of the theatre would be a little less bright and a little less chaotic with out them.

  Needless to say, they all knew their way about the place, even in the dark, and many were waiting at Dad's small office before I had found the light switch and checked the doors were all locked. His black tie suit, tails and all, was hanging on the back of the door in a protective cover. The song list and patter for his show at the old peoples home and the alms house were carefully written in a neat copperplate on a legal pad. That too suggested the dinner jacket.

  There was however a packet that had been delivered for him. A cardboard box and lots of shredded paper as packaging. No return address. Ginger sniffed it.

  “Smells of oil and brimstone.” Ginger said.

  “It wasn't me.” Mac added a little too quickly.

  I picked up some of the paper. It was the recycled kind. It had print on it. I put a few pieces of the shredded paper together. They matched. The words meant nothing to me. French? Latin? I found a few more pieces. The script was illuminated. There was a decorative flourish to the first letter and gold leaf. I picked out some words I recognised.

  “This packaging is a bible.” I said, worried.

  “What does this card mean?” Tiger held up a postcard. There was a message in it pasted together from little pieces of magazines and paperbacks.

  “THE PAWED MENACE MUST BE SCOURGED.” I read.

  “Who do you think it means?” Mac whispered.

  “THE BEARS WILL BE DRIVEN TO THE SEA.” I continued.

  “A waste of petrol.” Tiger tutted. “I mean, the delivery address is a pier. How far did they expect to...” A penny stopped defying gravity. “Uh oh.”

  “Uh oh.” Agreed the rest of the bears.

  “Is it me, or does this box look about chainsaw kind of sized?” I asked.

  “An oil stain!” Ginger sniffed the box. “Blade oil. The good stuff.”

  I had a very nasty feeling.

  “The chainsaw was cursed.” I whispered. “By somebody who doesn't like bears. And I left it in our shed.”

  “Argh!” Mac said. He had stumbled to the far side of the office behind the blind. The costume box was open, the make up table splattered with blood, and the corn syrup used on stage for blood. The greasepaint had dribbles of blood in it. The syrup had been over turned. The paint had been used to draw a bears face and cross bones on the mirror. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times. “Pirates!”

  “Or somebody who wants to offer death to bears.” I said.

  I stopped looking and started thinking. I closed my eyes and let the room tell the story. Dad was getting ready. The intercom buzzed for a delivery. He walks to the door, takes a heavy box. He brings it back to his desk and opens it. He sees the chainsaw and the packing. Some of the packing is singed, which suggests the next step. As dad leans in to pick the chainsaw up it splutters to life, the engine blazing and the teeth spinning across the chain, the cogs driving. The exhaust singes the paper. It gnaws his arm. He tries to hold it off, but somehow it has an influence on him now. He tries to fight the control but it makes him dress in the right costume. It makes him b
ecome the clown that wants to kill the bears.

  The damned chainsaw was alive. It was alive and it hated bears. It wanted to turn them inside out. I was about to leave when I saw the broken pieces of eggshell on the floor. Painted egg shell. The yoke and white dried and horrid, staining the floor where Dad had stamped on it.

  He thought the egg was the source of whatever strange magic had given the saw a blood lust.

  I drove back to the house in a bit of a hurry and made my way through the house and straight out into the garden, to the shed.

  Theodore Edison, the most American and least bumblingly chaotic of the bears, with a soft golden fleece and a stumpy tail, waddled after me.

  “I gave the others a glass of milk and put them to bed.” He reported. “Mrs Sussex received a small booster shot from the paramedics to prevent infection. Then she went home. She said she was very worried and you should call her any time.”

  “Thank you Ted. She is a good one.” I said.

  “Yes.” He agreed, adjusting his bow tie. He had yet to notice it was raining.

  “Stand back.” I whispered. I waved him back from the edge of the shed and opened the door. The chainsaw was on the shelf at the back where I left it, behind all the torches (flaming and flash light kinds), the ping pong table, the watering cans and the pitchforks. As I flicked on the light the engine of the saw roared to life and the device leapt forwards like an angry dog as it bounced across the concrete floor.

  I snatched a pitchfork from the pile and drove the fork through the grip of the saw, pinning it against a tea chest.

  “Eek!” Said Ted. He handed me some thick protective gloves that I put on to stop myself being cut as I clipped some heavy chains to the handles of the saw with padlocks and I fed them an iron eye set into the floor. This was not the first possessed machine my family had dealt with. I used another heavy padlock to secure the chains together.

  The saw leapt forwards again, the chains taut as they held it back and pinned it down. The saw barked and spluttered as it tried to break free. But we had it trapped. Safe. I locked the door behind me. Ted looked at me and wiped sweat or rain from his nose.

  “That was exciting!” He said.

  “Yeah. I better set about exorcising it in the morning.” I sat on the floor, heaving for breath. I reached for my phone and left a message for Mrs Sussex. “Hello. Sorry about the late hour. Dad is going to be fine, but we have some family things to deal with tomorrow. Make up for the excitement today by having the day off. Stay at home. Put your feet up. It will be fine.”

  I hung up and sucked in another lungful of air. I needed to sleep.

  *

  With the bears mostly in bed, and those who were not in bed at east sitting quietly and reading or playing board games I retired to my bed. I lay there and stared at the ceiling wondering how I was going to cast the demon out the saw, until sleep eventually claimed me.

  I dreamt about the family curse. The three edicts that would forever haunt me. The First Edict, is simple. All the demons, all the spirits of the Other World, everything that goes bump in the night and intends mischief on the mortal world will know our name and will be drawn to introduce The House Of King to their brand of magic. The bears differ from other spirit forms in that they actually like coming to meet us and tend to hang around. Pretty much everything else is a reason to learn how to cast demons, ghosts, goblins and ghouls back to where they came from.

  The second was that of the names. The first child of a King is male and will always be given the name of a modest trade so they would never more get an idea above their station. They would never again deem to think that their opinion, their freedom, their life was of equal importance or standing to the King Of the Other World.

  The third has never really been used. It is a standard clause that all curses bestowed by the King Of the Other World includes in all commands or curses he bestows. That for the seven and a half thousand years for which the curse will remain active the First born King will always be available and willing to serve the King of the Other World in whatever way amuses him.

  The problem is that the King of the Other World is not very much used to mortal affairs. A thousand years is nothing to a being in the eternal realm. He thought six would be a very small trifle of a punishment to a Knight who dared to demand the ethereal stranger he met during the Third Crusade treated him with the respect and status a Christian Knight was accustomed to.

  The curse will remain long after I have been shoved off this mortal coil.

  I dreamt of a sun backed valley in an exotic land where my ancestors fought for their lives until they were stripped of what little nobility they had earned.

  *

  Mrs Sussex did not take a day off. She was in the kitchen by the time I stumbled down the stairs, supervising the bears as they made their breakfast by mixing cereals from many different boxes into their bowls and added dried fruit, fresh fruit, and other treats into the cocktail before splashing it with milk and attacking it with gusto.

  “Here you go Sport.” She said, in that ringing Australian accent of hers.

  “Didn't you get the message?” I said. “It would be a paid holiday.”

  “I know. But the little beggars need help while you go and do your investigating.” She smiled and wiped her hand on her apron. “So what is your plan?”

  “Well, the bits of the egg shell had paint on that looks like the crude icon on the side of the saw. So I am going to go to the Hall of the Union for Working Acrobats and Tumblers and ask to see their Clown Archive.” I sipped the coffee.

  “I am going to get the blood stains out of the couch and carpet.” She smiled. “Then maybe do some dusting.”

  “Excellent.” I grinned. “Thanks.”

  “Have fun at the U-WAT.” She puckered her lips and clucked at a bear who was leaving a paw print on the fridge door. “Will you be back before nightfall?”

  “I hope so. It can't take too long can it?” I asked.

  “Well, don't hurry.” She said quietly. “I am in no rush to see you messing with that thing in the shed. You could do yourself a boo-boo.”

  “You are a god send Mrs Sussex.” I kissed her cheek on the way out. She swatted me away.

  “Yeah well you owe me a favour Fisher!” She shouted after me. I gave her a thumbs up to show I would make it up to her. She flashed me a smile as I left my coffee on the telephone table and skipped out of the house with a spring in my step.

  Ginger and Theodore Edison were waiting in the van. Exactly how was a mystery because it was all still locked.

  “You are going to the home of clowns.” Ginger said seriously. “You need support.”

  “Anybody else back there?” I said looking at the suspiciously lumpy blanket on the back seat.

  “No.” Said Tigers voice from under the blanket.

  “Are you all wearing seatbelts?”

  “Yes.” Said another bear who was not there.

  “Okay then.” We drove on out to work.

  *

  “U-WAT merged with the Brotherhood of Balloon-sculptors and Clowns a few decades back, which avoided a rather nasty court case.” The nice woman at the reception of the yellow bricked hall told us. “We also merged with a lot of local unions of entertainers and performers. We can do a lot of good work now.” She gestured to a computer. “You wish to track a member?”

  “A package was sent to the theatre, and it seemed to belong to a clown at some point. His make up was on the paint work. I wanted to find out the history.” I smiled. “I don't know if it if from a living concern or an inheritance. The note was a little mysterious.”

  “Well now.” The woman had olive skin, a distinctive tattoo of coiled salamanders on her neck and a shaven scalp. She had a certain exotic beauty to her and an easy charm. She patted Theodore Edison on his cheek. “Aren't you just the cutest?”

  “No ma'am. Ginger is the cutest. We did tests.” Ted answered.

  “Ha.” The woman picked up her computer. “O
kay, so do you have a picture of the item?”

  I showed her a photo of the chainsaw that was on my phone. It included the painting of a clown.

  “And all paint patterns are unique?” I asked.

  “Using certain features, like a coat of arms. I should say all the registered ones are unique. The unregistered fly by night operations could be anything.” She shook her head. “The make up is meant to define your style and tell people about your character. Just like how a lion or a dragon standing this way or that in a suit of arms has a different meaning.” She chewed her lips in thought. “Okay, yours is a Contra-Auguste, which means he would have been the middle man in a trio or troop of clowns. Like the straight man in comedy, not the leader, not the fool, the guy who is almost but not quite the voice of reason. So to speak. If he did speak. He would lord it over the Auguste, while trying to be more like the Whiteface, trying to copy everything the Whiteface does. He has diamond eye patterns, muzzle, painted nose and pipped mouth. Let's see...” She hit the keys on her computer. An icon not unlike the picture appeared.

  “Wow.” I said. “Do you know who he is?”

  “Would you like to meet him?” The girl asked. She obviously loved asking. She pointed me towards a corridor deeper into the building. There was a large refrigerated chamber with a seemingly endless row of display cases, in which were eggs. Each of them painted with a unique clown pattern. We walked straight past the gap where there should have been my fathers egg. She stopped by the own that matched our chainsaw. “Obadiah Hog weed. Deceased. The infamous chainsaw juggler.”

  “Infamous for the chainsaw?” I asked.

  “No. That is a popular stunt these days with the more extreme and gritty clowns. He was infamous for his terrible racism towards bears. He hated them. He wanted them to be... Well...” She shook her head. “Expunged from this world or any other. It was all, apparently, drunken bluster. But on his deathbed his biggest regret was never being brave enough to act upon his hatred other than to speak, constantly and terribly, about the scourge of ursine immigrants who were changing the face of entertainment away from that which he adored.” She looked ashamed. “He was a genius of his art, but towards the end of his career he was revealed to not be a very nice man.”