Read Online Inspector Hobbes and the Curse - a fast-paced comedy crime fantasy (unhuman) by Wilkie Martin - Free Book Online

visit to the butcher’s is in order. And quickly.’
    I
nodded. ‘Are you alright to drive?’
    ‘Never
better.’
    Indeed,
having stopped snuffling, his eyes, no longer retaining the pink tinge, having
instead turned a furious, burning red, he appeared fully recovered from his
allergic attack. Despite being reasonably confident that he wouldn’t harm me, I
felt like a kid in the tiger’s den. Standing up, dropping a handful of money
onto the bar, he dragged me from the settle, to which I’d become quite
attached, and dumped me in the back of the car. Dregs jumped into the front,
his panting almost as loud as the engine.
    I
closed my eyes, clinging to the seat as we accelerated away from the pub onto
the road, realising just how wrong I’d been to suggest his careful driving of
the morning might have been more alarming than his usual style. I knew we were
going fast, overtaking in places where no one in their right mind should
overtake but, when the car seemed to jump, landing heavily, my head banged the
ceiling and my eyes opened involuntarily, I saw he was taking a short cut
through what I guessed was Barnley Copse. Trees and shrubs whizzed past only
millimetres away, as we plunged into hollows, leaped over mounds, swerved past
fallen logs. But we didn’t hit anything, not even Bob Nibblet, who was staring
open-mouthed, a sack over his shoulder, as we skirted the hulk of a vast,
rotting trunk.
    After
a few minutes, a stomach-churning bounce and the wail of car horns, we left the
bumps and ruts behind, meaning my teeth were only chattering with terror. When
he stamped on the brake, stopping the car, I cannoned into the seat in front, sprawling
back, stunned, into the footwell, wishing I’d got round to doing up my seat
belt. As Hobbes got out, slamming the door behind him, Dregs stuck his head
between the seats to snicker at my predicament. By the time I’d extricated
myself and had struggled back into a sitting position, Hobbes was striding
back, a bulky parcel wrapped in white paper and string balanced on his
shoulder. Slinging it down beside me, he started the engine, and the nightmare
journey continued. Fortunately, it didn’t take long to get home and as I
clambered from the car I reflected, not without a degree of horror, that I did
regard 13 Blackdog Street as home.
    Hobbes
was already bounding up the steps to the door, the parcel tucked under his arm,
Dregs very attentive at his heels. At the top, he turned, tossing me the car
keys. I caught them – on the bridge of my nose, which didn’t half smart. After
wiping away the tears, I retrieved the keys from the gutter, locked the car and
prepared myself for the sitting room. I knew what was happening and intended
keeping out of the way.
    As
I entered, Hobbes having already spread newspapers in the corner of the sitting
room, lobbed his parcel onto the paper, springing after it, like a lion onto a
wildebeest. The bag disintegrated, spilling a dozen or so cow tails, as, shutting
the front door behind me, edging past, I fled towards the kitchen, cringing at
the sound of his great jaws crunching hide and bone. Dregs prowled round the
edge of the paper like a jackal hoping for scraps. When he’d first joined us,
he’d refused raw meat in favour of gourmet meals, but acquaintance with Hobbes
had broadened his horizons.
    Hobbes’s
face was already slathered with blood and hide and bits of bone, the hairy end
of a cow’s tail protruding from his mouth, as I made it to sanctuary. I shut
myself in the kitchen until it was all over. Though I’d seen him the same way
several times and no longer experienced the same paralysis of horror as on the
first occasion, I did my best to keep out of his way whenever he was enjoying
one of his ‘little turns’, as Mrs Goodfellow described them. She reckoned it
was just his way of ridding himself of built-up anger and frustration and it
seemed to work, for he was always most affable after a good session of bone
crunching.