The One-Legged Dog At The Gates Of Hell - A Macabre Encounter (Part The Last)

Part The Last - The End?


I lay in wait in my barely-concealed hidey-hole, waiting for the cold, clammy touch of the undead. I began to suspect that this was it, that my number was up. There would be no last minute reprieve for my Squirely self on this dire occasion. I began to reflect on my life (obviously with some speed and little time to linger on any specifics – particularly if those specifics involved a nun, a toboggan, a bucket of soapy frogs and one of the crowned heads of Europe). On the whole, it had been a good life, full of wine, women and song....well, mostly wine and women....well, mostly women, come to think of it.

My morbid and doom-laden reflections were interrupted by the sounds of cabalistic chanting. I risked a peep from beneath fear-lidded eyes. There in the middle of the room, arms aloft, reading aloud from a piece of parchment, stood dear old Arbie. His brave attempt to hold back this dread horde filled me a sense of overwhelming familial pride as I scurried further back into my impromptu bolthole and resumed my furtive cowering.

A rising howl began to pierce the very air about us. The shambling corpses stopped in their tracks and began to shudder, shake and shimmy. A harsh, coppery tang filled my nostrils. The chanting from Arbie ceased and there was a sudden sucking sensation in the air. The dread apparitions writhed and gyrated as if suffering the most gruesome agonies. Before you could say Jack Robinson, the ghouls were sucked kicking and moaning back into the hellish dimension from whence they'd emerged, leaving the portal to close itself with a rather disappointing popping noise. Dearest Arbie had saved the day!

I will confess that, upon emerging from that place, our conversation was somewhat on the strained side. It seems that Arbie was not overly enamoured of my enlightened sense of self-preservation (or "pant-moistening cowardice" as he chose to term it - each to their own). Discretion being the better part of valour and all that balderdash, I made my exit from Cairo as swiftly as was feasible.

Of course, my return journey to this dearly beloved isle of ours was not exactly the restful sojourn that I was hoping for but that, my dear old coves, is a tale for another time...



Here Endeth The Tale