The Medium Snooze - Chapter 5

Chapter Five : Tough times at Turfside.

Friday 7th July : Spiders. Two of them. So Sammy wasn’t kidding when he said he was going to get better protection. They were already stalking around the bar when I got up that morning, they looked liked common Orb Weavers, not that it mattered, when it comes to spiders they’ll all take your legs off if you so much as look at them funny. I can’t say I was happy, I mean, yeah sure, Sammy needed heavier protection than Harry and Gerry but spiders are strictly freelance and rarely made any situation better, obviously these two had been hired either directly by Sammy or by one of the mob families on his behalf.

“I took your advice Ernie boy. Do you like my new help ?”

Sammy was looking extremely pleased with his new appointments. He stood in the middle of the bar room and grinned from stalk to stalk.

“Let’s see those stag bastards try something now, eh Pincher ?”

“You’ve certainly seem to have got things covered. Could I have a word in private Sammy ?” I sounded worried even to my own ears.

“Sure thing Pincher.”

Sammy took me into his office, he slithered with a confident swagger that only a snail with that much protection could manage. Squelching into his chair behind the desk Sammy reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Miracle Grow.

“Drink ?”

Did everyone here hit the bottle as soon as they got up ? Under normal circumstances even I would have refused, it was only 6.00am for cryin’ out loud, but there were two Orb Weavers strolling around in the room next door, these were not normal circumstances by a long way.

“Yeah, thanks.”

The liquid fertiliser slipped down nicely, I waited for the nervousness to quieten down a bit. The butterflies in my stomach carried on fluttering, it was going to take more than one or two swigs to shift this bunch but I took another just to make sure. I’ve always wondered about that expression, ‘butterflies in your stomach’, always seemed kinda strange to me given that the average butterfly is about 15 times bigger than my stomach and besides which have you ever tried eating one of those things ? Don’t, they really taste disgusting.

“Sammy, where the hell did you get two spiders from ?”

“I didn’t Pincher. I just sent out a message yesterday to some friends of mine and this morning those two were on my doorstep.”

“Spiders ain’t affiliated Sammy. These guys must be freelance.”

“So are you Pincher. Anyway these guys are hive approved so they’re Ok by me.”

The hive. So Sammy has asked the Wasps for help and they had sent two spiders. I suppose Turfside was a little far from the apple tree, maybe the Wasps didn’t want to antagonise the Frogs any more than they had too. Still, I’d have been happier if they’d shown up in person rather than sending…

I managed to stop that thought dead in it’s tracks, what was I thinking ? That I’d rather have a bunch of Wasps crawling around Turfside ? Jeese, the shock of seeing those spiders must really have got to me, nobody is ever happy to see a bunch of Wasps, period. I don’t think they’re even thrilled to see each other. The spiders were worrying, sure, but a swarm of Wasps, especially this close to the pond, would have been much worse, those guys are a little like the ants in as much as they have virtually no independent thoughts. Unlike the ants, however, they are just plain nasty. Yeah, on the whole we were probably better off with the spiders.

“Sammy, these guys are serious, I mean you ever had dealings with spiders before ?”

“Not really Pincher, I used to just stay out of their way as much as I could.”

For the first time since I’d met him, Sammy had just impressed me with his level of intelligence.

“And you’d be better off keeping it that way Sammy, just watch these two or they might start eating your customers.”

“Pincher, the hive sent them, they wouldn’t send anyone who…”

“Look.” I interrupted “Listen to me very, very carefully Sammy because what I am about to say may just save your shell. These spiders don’t give a damn about the hive. The Wasps are paying them, presumably to keep you alive, but in the end, if they get bored they’ll take this place apart.”

“You worry too much Pincher.” Sammy didn’t sound quite so confident any more.

“Just be careful.”

Back in the bar I figured I’d better introduce myself to the new help. I approached the nearest spider, he was eyeing up Harry at the other side of the bar, it was making Harry understandably nervous.

“Hi, I’m Pincher, Ernie Pincher P.E. I’m sorta here looking after Sammy.”

“We’re here to protect the snail.” The spider didn’t bother to change the tone of his voice or even stop watching Harry, I hoped they weren’t getting bored already.

“You and your buddy got names ?”

Nothing.

“What is it with you bodyguards ? You all in some kinda union that enforces strict sullen rules or something ?”

At least that got a reaction. He smiled, turned to look at me, sized me up in a couple of quick up and down glances and came to the conclusion I wasn’t even close to anything like a threat. The thing that bothered me the most is, of course, that he was right.

“Yeah, we’re all in the sullen, bad tempered, evil git union. The rates are low but at least we get to eat whoever we like. Earwig is a particular personal favourite.”

At least he had a sense of humour, I think, but I decided not to push it. That night the atmosphere in the bar was unusually muted. Even when they try to be two orb weavers being discrete just ain’t that discrete, and our boys really weren’t trying. Even Sammy had lost some of his enthusiasm.

“These guys may be here to save my ass but they’re killin’ my business.”

It wasn’t until Melissa came on that the place got back to anything like normality. You’ve got to remember that this isn’t the hedge, sure the garden is rough everywhere but the worst that most of Turfside’s clients ever see of it is the odd bird or hedgehog attack. Right now they had two venom packed spiders watching over everything they said or did, and still every eye in the house was on the former Miss Magnific.

“How long are these guys going to be around ?” I asked Sammy as the evening drew to a close.

“As long as it takes I suppose, depends how long it takes to find the bastards behind all of this.”

“Your contact give you any idea how long that’d be ?”

“Listen Pincher, let me give you a free business tip. One thing I’ve learnt about dealing with the mob is that the hive and the pond have one thing in common.”

“What’s that ?”

“They don’t like it when some insignificant grub starts asking them for detailed time scales. And remember, I may be insignificant but I’m still way above you.”

He did have a point.

“Nah, don’t worry about it Pincher, I’ve a feeling this won’t take too long , these spiders can’t be cheap and the hive won’t hire ‘em for longer than they have too.”

As the bar started to empty I was surprised when one of the chorus line bugs slipped me a note. She was a cute little grasshopper, damn what was her name ? Susan ? Sharon ? Ahhh… something beginning with an S. I’d noticed her before, she was one of Melissa’s backing troupe, there were ten of them in total and she (Suzanne ? Sindy ?) was one of three that had attracted my attention when it wasn’t fixed on Melissa herself, which wasn’t often. Maybe this job was going to have a few hidden perks after all. I was almost disappointed when I recognized the handwriting and realised that it was from Melissa, then I read on :

“Ernie, meet me tonight. My room (208) at 1am. I need to talk, don’t tell Sammy. Melissa.”

Room 208 was a lot deeper into Turfside than my place, as the numbers get bigger, the depth gets deeper, and the rooms get lavisher, bigger and more expensive. Turfside didn’t have any permanent paying guests, at least not while I was there, but a few bugs hired rooms depending on how drunk they got or if they fancied a few days away and if you could afford it Turfside had all the luxuries you could ask for, of course I was on the top floor and Sammy and Melissa were at the bottom. This arrangement confuses a few bugs at first but then you just need to realize that as Turfside expands the builders keep digging downwards. I knocked on the door of room 208.

“Come in.”

It was Melissa’s voice. I opened the door and found myself in a spacious lounge, it was easily twice the size of my office back at the rhododendron bush and several times larger than the place they’d given me here. The room was exquisitely decorated in a very tasteful rose leaf green, two sofas faced each other and the bar in the corner didn’t look significantly worse stocked then the main bar upstairs. On all the walls were pictures of Melissa standing with various celebrities and dignitaries from the garden, everyone from Jimmy ‘Jazz’ Glow worm to Mafia bosses and high ranking ants, everyone was here. I noticed there didn’t seem to be too many of Sammy though. There were four doors leading out of the room apart from the one I’d just walked through, only one was open and it was through that one that I could hear Melissa calling.

“I’m in here Ernie, just come in .”

She was in her bedroom. Led on a bed about the size of the apartment I lived in. The gown she had on just about covered everything it needed to, but not much else.

“Where’s Sammy ?”

She smiled one of those smiles, it said if Sammy was here, you wouldn’t be.

“Sammy and I have separate bedrooms Ernie. It soon became clear after we got married that the physical side of our relationship really didn’t work too well. Sammy isn’t really all that interested in all that anyway but it helps his social standing to have a wife like me.”

I was still stood in the doorway, my brain was telling me to stop looking like a jerk and go and sit with her but at least four of my legs had stopped responding. Then there was that small part of my brain that was telling me that this really wasn’t a good situation, it was only going to complicate what was already a hideous mess of a case. I mean, her husband couldn’t have been more than two feet away and he currently had two psychotic bodyguards available to do his every whim. It was the sensible part of my brain telling me all this, the logical part, the professional part and I could almost feel the larger, surrounding part trying to beat it into silence.

“Come over here and sit down for a while.”

Bye bye professionalism.

“So you and Sammy never.. er.. you know ?”

“You ever made love to a snail Ernie ?”

“No, I can’t say I have.”

“Well I can’t say that I’m altogether sure I have either, but Sammy assures me I have. I mean, it’s nice to prolong the event a little but some movement to let a girl know there’s someone else there is pretty important too you know.”

This was really more information than I was looking for. Whilst horrible images of Sammy crawling over Melissa filled my mind the logical part of my brain recovered slightly and persuaded a few other bits that this was not good. I reckon it was an 80:20 split.

“So you had something you wanted to talk about Mrs. Maybrook ?”

“Please, Ernie. I think it’s time we stopped being so formal. What was it you called me in your office ? Mel ? Yes I think Mel will do quite nicely.”

70:30 split.

“It’s not that Sammy and I don’t love each other Ernie it’s just that a girl like me needs some physical contact now and again.”

One of her antenna brushed up against mine. 90:10 split, but a rallying call from my logical side brought up images of the orb weavers, 60:40 then.

“Come on Ernie I’ve seen the way you look at me. You can’t deny you want me as badly as I want you. You’ve seen the kind of bug that we get in here, lawn types, they wouldn’t last five minutes in your world, in the hedge.”

She was edging nearer all the time.

“I need a real insect.”

50:50. Make or break time.

“Look, Mel. Your, well, I mean, you look, well... it’s just. You’re beautiful and I’m very attracted to you but er... well, you're my client and it just ain’t ethical.”

“I could fire you.”

“I need the money.”

“Maybe I could pay you for other services.”

I’d seen that grin before, usually on some predator as it’s about to rip the guts out of some poor sap that got caught up in something bigger than it could handle. And right now I could sympathise, 30:70, it was time to leave.

“I’m already spoken for.”

“Who ?”

“Erm...”

“Not that weed of a secretary ?”

“Alice ? Ummmm.. yeah Alice. Yeah We’re kinda almost, sorta, engaged. Nearly. She’s a really nice kid. You’d like her.”

I was off the bed at least.

“Hmmm... You sure ?”

“Yeah, really. No look Mel. It wouldn’t be right, I mean you’re great and everything and if I wasn’t already, well you know.”

“I suppose I do.”

She looked fairly rejected. I guess there hadn’t been too many men in Mel’s life that had said no and 30% of my brain still couldn’t believe I just had.

“Look, I think I’d better go.”

She looked at me with big, watery eyes.

“Do you have to ? I really would just like to talk for a while, I won’t try anything. I get so lonely here.”

“Ok, I’ll stay a while but I’d feel more comfortable if we moved into the other room.”

So we moved into the lounge and talked. We just talked about small conversational stuff. How it had been at Turfside before Sammy arrived, how she fell in love with him, she kept asking questions about Alice and me and I just kept making up more lies. I felt kind of bad about it, here she was opening up to me and I was just telling her a pack of lies in return, still, I’d got myself into this mess and there was nothing I could do about it now.

By the time I left it was 3.45am and I needed a drink, actually I needed several drinks but I thought I’d settle for one large insecticide drenched one instead so I called into the bar on the way back to my room. It appears the night’s surprises weren’t over yet. Someone had redecorated the bar room. I could tell immediately that Sammy wouldn’t be happy about it because they’d used him as decorating material.

What was left of Sammy was lying in the middle of the floor, his shell was nowhere to be seen. I ran to check on him but from half a foot away I could tell he was dead, living snails tend to keep their vital organs inside their shells and not half an inch outside their body. Whoever had done this had made a real mess. A scraping noise off to my right scared the hell out of me, until I realised it was Gerry or what was left of Gerry. Barely conscious and missing two legs and an antenna Gerry was trying to crawl over to me. I got to him before he passed out.

“Where were you Pincher ? Mr. Maybrook sent me to find you.”

“Never mind Gerry, don’t move, I’ll get help.”

As soon as I said it I knew there was no help for Gerry. I might as well get all the information out of him that I could.

“Who did this Gerry ?”

“Stags. They arrived just as Mr. Maybrook had finished checking the takings. Said they wanted to talk. I was sent to find you, when you weren’t in your room I came back here. They were attacking Harry, and then they started on me. We didn’t stand a chance.”

Gerry was looking off into a corner, from the tears in his eyes I guessed the mess in that corner had been Harry.

“What about the spiders Gerry ? What happened to them ? How many damn beetles were there ?”

It would have taken more than the two stags we’d met before to take out two orb weavers, how many of them had there been here ?

“Nothing. They didn’t do anything Pincher. They just stood and watched as the beetles took Mr. Maybrook apart.”

Gerry eyes rolled over. Turns out that was the all the information anyone was ever going to get from him.