The Masterful Saxon

The stage was clear. The lights were bright. The audience had bated breath.

Lyra made her way to centre stage. She bowed and was just about to flick her wrist with the luminous material on, therefore causing a misdirection allowing the magician to be lowered behind a secret panel, when the sounds of a whirring engine exploded into life. She stepped back and suddenly flew across the stage as a blue box appeared. It let out rippling white energy that started to activate different pieces of machinery. She heard a clicking and turned around as she saw the bullet shooter activating for the bullet catching illusion later on. She hurried out of the way and watched in awe as a man stepped from the large blue box. 

He was dressed in eccentric clothing, a large red hooded robe, and had seemed to be confused. He stepped out of the box just as the shooting machine activated. A little pellet of lead shot across the stage and broke through the clothing of the man spraying pink blood across the stage.

The audience were screaming by this point, except from a young boy in a yellow tabard who knew what was about to happen. The boy then flickered away as the projector turned off and the beam displaying him died.

The man from the box looked at Lyra then at the audience then closed his eyes. His skin started to ripple as heat spread across it. As he spread out his arms so he resembled a cross, his whole body erupted into flames. The orange light enveloped his body and suddenly he was no longer there. A form of blue light stayed inside the flame until it regrew into a new body that was too small for those funny clothes. The flames died and the man spoke two words as the Masterful Saxon, the magician who worked at the theatre in question and was called Harry, walked on.

"The mast.." He spoke and then he blacked out.

The man opened his eyes. They were blue and he couldn't see anything because it was the first bright light he had seen in his life. Although he wasn't sure why that was as the mirror at the end of his bed showed the reflection of a young man. It also showed the reflection of young woman but she was sat to the side of the bed and didn't have any wires hanging out of her. He remembered seeing her face before he fell asleep.

Now he was in an empty corridor, with one bed, a visitors chair and table and a couple of life support units. He looked towards the door and saw the weapons of two guarding soldiers outside.

"How did you do that trick?" Asked the girl.

"I'm sorry?" Replied the man.

"I've seen magicians do transformations before. I've seen them doing teleportation's before. But I have never seen anyone appear out of nowhere on a stage that is not rigged, survive an actually lethal shot and then transform themselves from one person to another whilst being on fire."

"I don't remember any of that."

"Surely you remember don't you?"

"No?"

"You said something before you blacked out."

"Yes. Am I allowed to get out of bed?"

"Sure."

"Thanks." The man climbed out of the bed and started to walk around the room touching different bits and pieces.

"So what did you mean by those two words?"

"I don't know." He said as he unscrewed a tiny bulb from an LED sign.

"What did you say?"

"The Mast. I remember thinking that when I saw that man in the cape, Those words arose in my mind."

"Interesting."

"Yes very isn't it." The man was pulling some wires from out of a plug socket.

"What are you doing?"

"I don't know."

"That reminds me. Harry had taken your blue box."

"Whose Harry? Which blue box?" The man was taking Lyras IPod whilst he spoke to her.

"Harry is my boss. He's the man who came on stage as you said, 'the mast'. He's a magician and I'm his assistant. The blue box was  your teleportation cabinet."

"Right." The man was wiring the little things together without looking when he said, "when you brought me in, did I have anything on me?"

"Your clothes were taken by the soldiers and your effects were put in a bag for you."

"Can I have them?"

"Here you go." She handed him the bag which he opened. Inside the bag was a key, a Rubik's cube with weird symbols on and a bag of jelly babies. He started to eat the jelly babies whilst he finished off the weird contraption he had been working on. He went across to a window and attempted to open it. "Stuck tight." 

"What?"

"The window it's shut." Without thinking he pointed his new contraption at it and pressed one of the buttons. The device glowed red then green and the window opened. He looked back at Lyra and said, "Coming?"

"Where?"

"Back to the theatre."

"Sure."

"Lets go."

The man jumped from the window to the floor, it was only about six foot above the ground and he was wearing slippers. He grabbed a doctors jacket from the back of a bench and threw it over his back. His hair was pulled back so he could see and allowed his face to be observed by everyone with Lyra walking behind him in a gothic Egyptian dress, she didn't have time to change before she got taken to the hospital.

They walked over to a taxi and the man put his contraption over the passenger door lock. The contraption was a metal ring with a glass lens in it attached to the palm of his hand. It was held on by a leather glove with a metal ring on the outside. The leather glove was connected also to a metal band around his wrist. On it was an IPod with strange symbols on it and wires coming out connecting to the glove. 

The man climbed in and turned to the driver. "Take us to the theatre".

"Which theatre?" Asked the cab driver.

"The Reptuswan Theatre." Replied Lyra who had just climbed in.

As the taxi driver exclaimed about all the weird things that had happened there, the man realised everything

"And that was just last year," Finished the taxi driver as they pulled up to the back stage door.

"Thank you. Sorry we have no money." Announced the man.

"Hang on. You're not going anywhere!"

"Sorry about the locks." The man put his contraption to the door handle and the car door broke open.  He and Lyra walked to the stage door. "Lyra I need you to make your way to the stage. Any door that you can't open, just insert this key into it." He placed the key from his possessions bag into Lyras opened palm.

"Where are you going?" She asked nervously.

"To get help. Make your way to the stage. I will meet you there."

"Ok. Thank you."

The man ran away and Lyra turned to the stage door. She opened it and walked through. Making her way forward, she stepped onto wings. She was in a little room and the door behind her pulled shut. She couldn't open and so hurried to the door nearer to the stage and tried to open it. It wouldn't budge so, as a hydraulic pipe from one of the illusions burst, she tried the key she had been given in the door.

It opened and she stepped onto the stage. In the middle  of the stage was the blue box with wires coming off it and plugged into the stage lamps. Standing next to the box was Harry. 

"Hello Lyra." He exclaimed. He was wearing a black robe with red scarf wrapped around his neck.

"Hello Harry."

"Well you see that's where you're wrong. I'm not Harry anymore. I'm Harold. Harold Saxon. Or maybe even the Masterful Saxon. But that isn't my real name. Oh no. My real name is one of the words but not Saxon or Harold. My name is The Master."

"I don't understand."

"Humans never do!" He exclaimed the do louder than any of the other words.

"What's gong on?"

"Don't you remember the year that never was?"

"What?"

"The year when the toclanfane fell?"

"No?"

"Well in that year I won. The Doctor lost and I won. And with the Tardis I can make that year happen again. Now if I want. In fact I think it will!" He clicked his fingers and pulsing green energy came out of the blue box- or the Tardis- and exploded out of the lights. As the master watched the lights he didn't notice a black cloth lowering onto the back ground. He didn't notice the trapeze behind the material and more importantly he didn't notice the man hanging from the trapeze. 

The man hanging from the trapeze stepped behind the Tardis. He was in full view of Lyra but could not be seen by The Master. He was dressed in a stereo typical magician outfit, popularised by Jean Paul Robert Houdin. The man lifted his contraption hand up to the stage roof lights and the glass lamps started to shatter. The time energy pulsing out of them died and retracted flying back into the Tardis. "Who are you?" Cried the Master when he saw the man in the magician outfit step out. 

"I am The Doctor."

"But you can't be."

"Oh I am."

"How did you know I was here?"

"I was on Galifrey with Reptuswan. We were talking about your evil and trickery when Reptuswan decided to find out where you were. We saw you were here and I said I'd come and get you. You have crimes to pay for after all. I landed the Tardis there but I didn't count on regenerating."

"Well there was another thing you didn't count on."

"What's that Master?"

"Me stealing the Tardis." The Master opened the door and stepped through into the Tardis, the glow enveloping in.

"Master step away from that!"

"No. You always win Doctor not today." The doors smashed shut and the Doctor raced over, shooting the door with his hand contraption. Nothing happened. Slowly the Tardis started to dematerialise until the space it had stood in was empty.

"Care to explain?" Asked Lyra as the two soldiers from outside the hospital doors walked onto the stage.

"Ah. Hello Unit."

"Doctor. We received your message."

"Thank you for coming. Sadly my plan didn't work so I'll be staying on this planet for a bit."

"Ok." Replied the taller soldier.

"Bring me my equipment."

"I think the commander would prefer you to set a base at one of our buildings."

"No thanks. Now Lyra do you mind if I live here?"

"Without Harry there won't be any shows for a while so sure. We would be requiring money though."

"How much do you normally get in a week?"

"Well it's three hundred pounds on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we don't perform on Thursdays, on a Friday it's about six hundred pounds and same on a Saturday."

"Well I'll pay you two thousand, two hundred pounds on the days you are usually paid and two hundred pounds for each of the other days."

"That sounds ok."

"Oh and in addition, when I get the Tardis back- because I will- I shall take you anywhere you like in the whole of time."

"Is any of this true?"

"Yes!"

"Well then, I shall be considering that."

"Thank you."

"Just one question."

"Ask away!"

"Are you going to keep that outfit?"

The Doctor and Lyra will return in, 'Defence of the Silurian's.'

The Occult and Helios' Eye (part 5)

A meeting a few days before they flew out to Egypt:

"Thank you for coming." Abbandon announced, smiling. He shook hands with everyone in the room. "Now I gather you here today, not for a wedding but for us to plan to break into the Public Alexandrian Museum, otherwise known as PAM. I've already planned it, but I want us to go over the finer details, to iron out any problems." He paused for breath, tidying the tufts of white hair he had remaining behind his ears.  "Right then. Work with the PAM has already begun. Miss DeMode here," he gestured to her, "sold a specially designed keycard to the head of security this morning. This keycard will allow us to take control of the doors they assign it too. And do you know what door that is?"

No was the general reply.

"The door to the restoration room, where the eye of Helios is kept. I'll explain why this is important later. Now, our cover is as documentary makers, which will appeal as the museum has been losing publicity recently. Miss DeMode will play our presenter, Bone Piern the director and Word Chain will play the cameraman. Joan, my personal favourite lab rat, will be playing as Miss DeMode's daughter. Here's the main problem. We've heard rumours that the eye of Helios may be being bought soon, so it's going to have to be a rather in and out style job. Getting in is easy enough, it's the getting out I'm concerned by."
Bone Piern smiled. "How about we pretend someone is dead?"
"I'm sorry?" Peter replied.
"When Margaret Thatcher died, the BBC changed their scheduling so they could have shows about her. I was most disgruntled, as they cancelled New Tricks. What if we did that? What if one of their staff died whilst we were filming and so we said we'd been given a deadline to finish so we could celebrate the dead persons life."
Peter grinned like a schoolboy. "Genius! Chain, DeMode look into it."
"Won't they find it weird that we're in and out very quickly? I mean the plan to get out is brilliant, but surely they might be suspicious?" Joan suggested.
"Which is why we're going to put it on television." Peter replied.
"We have our own television channel?!" Joan exclaimed, doubtfully.
"Of course!" Word Chain replied. "How else would you explain BBC 4?"
"Now, once we're in, we'll spend the first day simply learning the surroundings and then on the second, we'll perform the heist. And boy it's brilliant. At some point, one of you will drop an electromagnet into an inexpensive vase. That night, you'll return to the room and continue filming. About halfway through, Joan will request to go to the toilet. Miss DeMode will accompany her. You'll leave the toilets and then go to the restoration room." He pointed to the location on the map on the table. "The door can be opened with a keycard and a code, but quite cleverly, we sold them the keycard. The card is specially designed to record the code, so you'll be able to open the door. Once you're inside, you'll have to work out your own way of getting the eye back out, but you will have the electromagnet to turn off all the security cameras. Now, once you've done that, you can come home. Remember, you can stop the guards getting into the restoration room by deactivating the keycard remotely." And so it went on.

Sunday:

"Tomorrow." Miss DeMode climbed up. "Please excuse me. I need to make some arrangements."
She walked out and pulled out her scribe, switching it to the call menu. She got threw to the lab rat menu and selected the Bainsbridge Repository. "Hi." She said. "Is there a lab rat on site called Spud?"
"One moment Miss." A few minutes later the voice came back. "Yes, Miss. What would you like me to tell him?"
"Give him the brief case he handed in under my name yesterday and send him to the copiers furnace." DeMode hung up and dialled another number. "Hello? Is that you O'Collin?"
"What do you want?" The irish copier, a member of the Occult, replied. "I only get a little holiday from the Public Alexandrian Museum."
"How would you like a permanent holiday?"
"Is that threat?"
"Sort of. We're trying to steal something from the PAM and I need you to do me a favour."
"What?"
"I need you to pretend to be dead."
"What!?"
"I need you to allow us to fake your own death. I'll give you £25,00."
There was a pause down the line. "Make it £50,000 and you've got yourself a deal." He was being a bit cheeky at that moment, as he'd been planning to disappear, but he might as well take as much money as possible.
Miss DeMode thought. That sounded too much, but she remembered Peter's parting instructions. 'The artefact is paramount. Take it, by any means.' "Alright. £50,000. A runner called Spud will arrive with the money soon. I have got a question, though."
"Yes?"
"Of all the pieces still in the restoration room that you have made, which would you say resembled the eye of Helios the most?"
He remained silent as he thought. "With a bit of alteration, I'd say my replication of Michelangelo's David's head."
"Thanks. See you soon."
"Unless I don't rise from the dead."
She hung up and rung her assistant. "Hi AI." She said. "I need you to buy something for me."
"Of course, Miss. Under what name and from where? And what, of course!"
"The O'Collin replication of Michelangelo's David from the Public Alexandrian Museum. Offer up to £500,000 and put it under the Florentine Museum. It'll improve their confidence."
"Of course, Miss. How's it going?"
"Not good. Not good at all." She hung up and smiled. Perhaps it would work.

Tuesday Night:

They ran in and consulted a computer system, finding the location of two different artefacts, David's head and the Eye of Helios. They ran to the eye and dropped it into a box labelled with the name of the eye. They loaded the box onto a trolley and pushed it to the room in which David's head was stored. They opened the box and took the Eye out. It was round and smooth, unlike the head which was round but rough. There was a box in the room, identical in every way apart from the label on the front, which read 'David by Michelangelo.'
Miss DeMode, quite carefully, started chip away at the head whilst Joan swapped the labels. Once DeMode had finished her preparation of the head, so it looked like the eye, then she and Joan dropped them carefully into the two boxes.
All of a sudden, the lights went out. But Joan and Miss DeMode didn't react. It was part of the plan.
They flicked on their torches and carried the box holding the altered head to the room they had started in. And so they continued.

Wednesday:

Two planes rolled out of a hangar. "What are they?" Asked Joan.
"Our two courier planes. One of them is taking the replica head of David by our copying friend." The curator assistant replied. But it wasn't taking the head to the Florentine Museum, it was taking it to Rhodes. And the other plane was taking the Eye to Florence, where it would be picked up and conveyed back to the Obscure Meadows.
"Oh!" Joan replied.
After they finished talking, the Occult members climbed onto their jet and flew all the way back to England, to organise the new show being added to BBC 4.

The Occult and Helios' Eye (part 4)

Filming concluded that night in the room where the mini electromagnetic pulse machine had been deployed. As the complexes clock tower struck nine: thirty, Joan asked to go to the toilet. As planned, Miss DeMode accompanied her, however the curators assistant escorted them towards the public bathrooms.
As they entered the toilet, they managed to ditch the escort, and waited patiently for him to disappear. Five minutes later, he did so, and they sneaked out, towards the restoration room.
Despite being a fairly new building, the Public Alexandrian Museum was built in honour of the European museums that revolutionised the mass collection of artefacts. All the walls were decorated with paintings of ancient kings, the doges of Venice and other famous pieces of work. Miss DeMode smiled at an imitation of Da Vinci's Girl with tangled hair. It had always been her favourite painting.
They finally arrived at the door of the restoration room, a labyrinth of intricate workshops, each holding marvellous wonders, not too far away from legendary. The door was old and detailed, but that was just an illusion. Inside the door was a magnetised sheet of metal, which held the door to the frame, unless a keycard was inserted into the scanner besides the door. Miss DeMode pulled out her scribe, an experimental smart phone that the Occult had built. She opened the first app and a series of numbers came up. Smiling she told the numbers to Joan, who inserted a business card into the scanner. It beeped green and she typed the numbers in. Slowly the door swung opened.
They ran in and consulted a computer system, finding the location of two different artefacts. They ran to the first and dropped it into a labelled box. They loaded the box onto a trolley and pushed it to the room in which the other artefact was stored. They opened the box and took the artefact out. It was round and smooth, unlike the artefact in this room, which was round but rough. There was an identical box in the room, identical in every way apart from the label on the front.
Miss DeMode, quite carefully, started chip away at the second artefact whilst Joan swapped the labels. Once DeMode had finished her preparation of the second artefact, she and Joan dropped them carefully into the two boxes.
All of a sudden, the lights went out. But Joan and Miss DeMode didn't react. It was part of the plan.
They flicked on their torches and carried one of the boxes to the room they had started in. They were approaching the door when they heard a terrible sound. Two security guards approached the restoration room. Both Occult members flicked off their torches and crouched down, as the guards pulled out their key cards. Miss DeMode whipped out the scribe and quickly turned it on, cursing the flare of the hand held screen. She went onto the same app she'd used to open the door and pressed several buttons and then placed the phone down.
Two minutes later, the guards walked off, muttering something in Egyptian. DeMode gave out a breath of relief and then climbed up, leading Joan out. They returned to Bone Piern and Word Chain, just as the lights turned back on. Miss DeMode smiled and explained that she and Joan had become lost in the dark, just as the plan required.
They continued filming and then, the next day, were escorted to the private airfield that the museum owned. "It's been a pleasure to have you," the curators said, from the back seat of the car.
"Trust me." Bone Piern said. "The pleasure is all ours."
"I can't wait to see the documentary!" The curator cried.
"Neither can I." Joan muttered. Two planes rolled out of a hangar. "What are they?"
"Our two courier planes. One of them is taking the replica head of David by our copying friend." The curator assistant replied.
"Oh!" Joan replied.
After they finished talking, the Occult members climbed onto their jet and flew all the way back to England.

A week later:
"I don't see why I can't have champagne?" Joan asked as everyone clashed their glasses.
"Because I will not have children taking alcohol." Peter Abbandon replied. "It's against the law."
"Say's the man who orchestrated a grand heist."
Joan's friend pulled her off, behind the buffet table. They all called him Spud, due to his infatuation with Bob the Builder's scarecrow friend, and he had quite recently become Miss DeModes personal lab rat, after she'd had him convey a brief case with a lot of money in to Bainsbridge repository.
"Don't be rude to Mr Abbandon." Spud whispered. "He can do terrible things to you!"
"I don't see why you're so scared of him. He's an angel really." She giggled ever so slightly, but Spud didn't get it.
"Alright." He paused scratching his head. "Can you tell me how you did it then. I mean, I understand why the guards didn't get in, but I don't understand the rest."
"Deary me Spud!" Her time with Peter showing. "It's obvious once you know how it's done."

To be concluded

The Occult and Helios' Eye (part 3)

The Public Alexandrian Museum is situated in Egypt's second city, merely a mile from the ruins of the original library. It had it's own helicopter landing zone, which could be found near to the large public canteens.
It was the public canteens that Miss DeMode, Word Chain, Bones Piern and a lab rat by the name of Joan entered first, as they were led by the curators assistant from the helicopter pads and towards the curators study. "This way please." The man asked.
DeMode clutched Joan's hand tightly, as that was part of the guise and grimaced. Mister Baled hadn't been able to come, so they were one man down. They'd adjusted the plan so they didn't need him but she didn't feel nearly as confident. "Where do you want to do the filming then?" The assistant asked to Word Chain.
"The grand hall is our main interest, with the majority of the rest being filmed in your small collections." Chain replied.
Bone Piern interjected quickly. "I'd like some texture shots."
"I don't understand?" The man replied, putting in a key code, unaware that Joan was filming him.
"Whilst we cut from one shot to another, the producers will often put other quick shots in."
"Oh." The man replied still none the wiser.

The curators study was filled with books and resembled Peter Abbandons, apart from the fact that the man sat behind the desk wasn't small, old and quaintly English, because the curator of the Public Alexandrian Museum, was overweight, thirty five and Egyptian. With every step, the floorboards creaked, weakened from years of the curator walking over them. "Hello!" He cried. "Please, sit down, sit down."
Despite the amount of tourists visiting the museum every week, the Museum had become less and less popular. This sudden media attention, as that was their guise, had filled the curator with such enthusiasm that he'd waved them in, no questions asked, just as Abbandon had predicted.
The plan was simple: they were to infiltrate the museum by pretending to be documentary makers, with Bone Piern acting as the director, Word Chain acting as a cameraman, Miss DeMode as the presenter and Joan the lab rat acting as Miss DeMode's daughter. The plan was that, one night whilst filming, Joan would pretend to need the toilet. At this point, Piern and Chain would distract whoever else was present whilst Joan and Miss DeMode would steal the eye.
The curator didn't suspect a thing, and so he waved them on to start filming. They spent the day making a fake documentary and noting where the security camera's were, stopping only for a brief lunch provided by the Museum.
That night, as they settled in the restaurant in their hotel, Word Chain came back dismayed. "I had a group of my librarians set up communications with the Museum, just to make it more realistic."
"So?" Asked Joan, taking a sip of the orange juice she'd been presented with.
"One of them was doing a routine call about little details, and so to keep the illusion working, they asked lots of questions. Anyway," he cut to the point, sensing the others boredom, "one of the questions was about anything been sold or bought. Well, you'll never guess what's being sold to a museum in Rhodes."
Miss DeMode buried her head in her hands. "The eye."
Chain nodded.
"God. When are they selling it?"
"They already have. It's being sent on Tuesday." Today was Sunday.
"Right." DeMode sighed. "We're going to have to pull it forward."
"When to?" Piern asked.
"Tomorrow." Miss DeMode climbed up. "Please excuse me. I need to make some arrangements."

"Cut, cut, cut!" Piern cried, displaying his natural flare for acting. "Whose phone is that?"
The curators assistant apologised and hurried out. As he went, Joan jumped up from the seat she'd been put on and extracted something from Pierns zip bag. Piern, Chain and DeMode continued their routine. The thing she'd removed was a miniature electromagnet. She placed it inside a not too expensive vase and returned to the chair, as the curators assistant returned, beaming. "This is a great week for us! Not only have we managed to sell our Colossus of Rhodes Artefact, but we've also managed to sell our replica of David's head."
"David's head?" Questioned Joan.
"David, by Michelangelo. It's a famous statue. Replica's, depending on their accuracy, often go for a lot. We happen to employ one of the greatest copiers in Europe."
"Why say from Europe?" Joan asked. "Egypt is in Africa, right?"
"Yes, but our copier is from Ireland. He did a lot of work for your queen."
"Oh!"
The day continued without hitch, until lunchtime. Miss DeMode came running, pretending to be distressed. The curators assistant looked up, concerned. "Whatever is wrong?"
"I just had a call from the studio. We need to finish for tomorrow."
"Why?" Piern replied, following the script.
"You know the copier we were talking about earlier."
"Yes?"
"Well, he's had a heart attack and the channel are having a special night in remembrance of him."
The curators assistant hurried to the curators office, probably to fill him in.
"Clever reason to finish it quickly." Joan replied.
"No it isn't." Miss DeMode replied. "He's actually dead."
There was a silence.
"That really isn't good."

To be continued

The Occult and Helio's Eye (part 2)

"Helio's Eye!?" Miss Demode exclaimed.
"Yes. Helio's eye. Please, take a seat and, once the others have turned up, I shall explain in full detail." Peter waved her to a seat and went up onto the stage, where a lab rat sat behind a computer desk, preparing the power point he had made for Peter Abbandon.
A lot of people turned up, three curators, referred to as Sir or Miss, six librarians, referred to as Words, five restorers, referred to as Bones, and sixteen board members, informally referred to as Boring members.
Once everyone had taken a seat and the talkative atmosphere died, Peter began, waving his arms around like the enthusiastic schoolboy he truly was. "Thank you for coming." He started. "Now I'm sure when you heard my terrible beckoning you all expected you were either being promoted or fired." He paused for effect, nodding to the lab rat for some reason. "Well I gathered you here because you're all fired."
There was silence. The lights dimmed. No one dared to speak, not for one second presuming he might be kidding. He nodded again and the lab rat, made a note.
"Only joking." In unison, everyone exhaled loudly, relieved at the prospect of keeping their jobs.
"Apart from you. You're literally fired." He pointed at Bone Stevenson, who left crying.
The lab rat tapped the keyboard and the gigantic display at the back turned on to reveal the Colossus of Rhodes. "Does anyone know what this is behind me?" He gestured to the screen.
"The green giant going for a bath?" Some cried.
"Close. It's actually one of the seven wonders of the world." The screen flicked to another image. "The Colossus of Rhodes was built by Charles of Lindos to celebrate the victory of Rhodes over the ruler of Cyprus. Depicting the Greek titan Helios, it stood at 98 feet tall, which shockingly is the same height as my grandson."
There was laughter.
"It was destroyed in 226 BC by an earthquake. An earthquake, on an island, destroyed a statue that stood in the sea. Tell me, do you think much survived?"
"No." Was the general reply.
"You're wrong." The screen flicked on again to another picture. "According to rumour, most of it was sold to a wealthy jew, who took it away to be melted down, but recently, in continuous correspondence with the Public Alexandrian Museum, the modern day counter part of the original Museum of Alexandria that kept many of the original lists, we've discovered several remaining aspects of the six destroyed wonders of the world. Most of them were trivial, but there was one we were quite interested in. The eye of Helios. What's important is that we believe the eye of the Colossus of Rhodes, or alternatively Helios' Eye, is valuable, and we don't trust the Public Alexandrian Museum with it. So, I would like to send a team of you to go and retrieve the eye before they can sell it. Now, before I can sanction this, I need the board members permission, as for some reason you don't trust me."
"I can't see why, Mr Abbandon." The head board member replied. "Not all of us like this idea, but our opinion has never stopped you, so we've decided to condone it nonetheless. Still, if it all goes wrong, we won't be bailing you out."
Peter smiled. "Thank you for your continued support and help, my favourite board members. I wouldn't have been able to get through this without you. And trust me, you're all invited to my funeral."
"Really?" Asked the lab rat, following some script Peter must have written.
"Over my dead body."
The audience laughed greatly.
Peter bowed, lapping up the laughter, and said, "Miss Demode, Word Chain, Bones Piern and Mister Baled, if you could choose a lab rat I would much appreciate if you could meet me in my study and we can start to plan our attempt to retrieve Helios' eye. Thank you."
Within twenty four hours, they were on a plane to Alexandria to retrieve the eye of the seventh great wonder of the world.

The Occult and Helios' Eye

Molly DeMode sat with her feet up on a table smiling at the back of her mark. He was walking away from a serious deal, where two briefcases had been exchanged. Once briefcase was silver and triple locked, and that was the one Miss DeMode had started with. The one she was in possession of now was new, perfectly created with a big company logo inscribed on the front, with the initials beneath. PAM. Inside was one hundred thousand pounds in fifty pound notes. She grinned. One hundred thousand pounds for a faulty key card. She took her legs off the table and picked up her phone, as she noticed the guy twist his head ever so slightly. She gave him a wave, and mouthed 'Pleasure doing business with you' then turned her attention back to the phone. She waited till he disappeared then put her feet back up, dropping the phone down. She called over a waiter, who happened to work for her organisation, and had him get her two milkshakes, both banana. He nodded and went off to fetch them whilst she stayed sat in the shadow of the gigantic church. It was a evangelical Anglican Church with the tag line, 'We hope to provide a welcoming atmosphere for locals and visitors. Our doors, like those of Gods, are always open.' Ironic. The old wooden doors, rounded at the top, were firmly bolted to stop both local thieves and those visiting from stealing old bibles. The waiter returned, placing the milkshakes down and politely asking her to take her feet off the table. She obliged and gave him a tip for being polite. "Never eat a raw blowfish."
He nodded, appreciating the tip. She waited for him to go, and then reached into her large satchel. She pulled out a card holder, like a folder that you might get with trading cards, and swapped the straws of the milkshakes around. Within a few seconds, a small child was sat in the opposing chair. The child was a boy, about the size of the average sofa, in height not width, and he wore an inconspicuous outfit. "Occult Delivery Service. We're obscure, so you don't don't have to be." He winked as he said 'obscure.'
Miss Demode smiled at him and offered him the milkshake. "You don't have to say the slogan on every delivery. How new are you to this job?"
"Three weeks." He answered.
She nodded. "I thought so. Tell me, have you got any keycards yet?"
"Just one Miss." He whipped out a basic keycard, pleased. "Lunch, toilet and lower library pass."
She remembered when she'd been presented with that keycard. "Look after that card, kid. It's a good card to have. Now, which entrance do you normally use?"
"Bainsville."
She nodded again, flicking to about half way through her book of keycards. "Well have this," she handed him a three week loan Bainsville keycard, "and deliver this brief case to the banking department, under the name DeMode."
He nodded, took the brief case and the keycard, then went away, hurrying to the Bainsville depository.
She stood up, waved to the waiter and walked to the large theatre building, slipping away the card holder.
The Obscure Meadows has been in development since 1875, opening in 1878 and then being modified for use as a theatre throughout the next sixty one years. In 1946, fresh from the end of the second world war, it was closed down, after heavy damage during an attack by the Luftwaffe. In 1956, Peter Abbandon bought the building and started to renovate it. It became his own private obsession, and, in the Obscure Meadows, he created his very own secret organisation. And he called it the Occult.
It was the Occults mission to seek out rare artefacts and strange bits of information and protect them from the general public. They also attempt to stop villainous organisations from destroying rare artefacts. Inside the Obscure Meadows, which acted as their head quarters, they had forty eight libraries, fifty studies, one hundred galleries and exhibitions, three lunch halls, two radio stations, two hundred dormitories, three actual gardens and seventy classrooms. There was, at any one time inside the building, at least one thousand and eighty members of staff present.
The Obscure Meadows obviously had a lot of doors, and a lot of their contents were classified. Because of that, all the rooms were accessible by different key cards. There was only one person who had them all, and nobody knew who that was. Many suspected Miss Demode of owning all the keycards, but she didn't, as she knew there were a few she didn't have. In three days though, that number would shrink.
She pulled out her purse, which had her six most essential cards in. The card to her study, the card to her gallery, the card to the first seventeen levels of catacombs, the basic level card, the gangway key and the lab rat card. She used the basic levels card to get herself into the building then the study card to get her in the elevator and up to her private study. The study had a small research room in front, a large table with three librarians, three restorers and, in search of a better phrase, her personal assistant.
The assistant, called Al, picked a stack of paper up and followed her into the study.
"Keep it brief, Al." Miss Demode insisted.
"Yes, Miss. The restorers have called up. That find in Africa hasn't coughed up anything noteworthy, so they want permission to negotiate on the Alley."
"Granted." She replied, sitting down in the old chair behind her desk. Both pieces of furniture were a salvage from an old high school, with both holding lots of different carvings.
"We had a call from Jamaica. They want you at the next conference."
"Send Word Chain." Word was the title that the librarians were given.
"Ok. Also, Mr Abbandon want's you to attend a meeting in the downstairs auditorium."
Miss DeModes face turned white. "That's not good."

It wasn't good. Peter Abbandon was the grand curator of the Occult, and when he called you to the downstairs auditorium, it meant one of two things was going to happen. You were going to be fired/promoted or you were being given an important job. Miss DeMode had been called there three times. Two of those times, it'd been a large promotion. The other time it had been for a robbery at an art gallery in Dubai. The Occult weren't illegal, but they weren't exactly legal either.
"Ah, Miss DeMode." Peter Abbandon announced, as she entered. It was always strange meeting Mister Abbandon, as he looked as if he should be curled up in an armchair, whinging ever so often about how everything was so much better when he was a kid, but was actually quite the opposite.
His every moved was laced with the excitement and enthusiasm of a schoolboy who truly loved the wonder of the world around him, and, in a way, that was what Peter Abbandon would always be.
A man who knew a lot, but wasn't satisfied. A man, who wanted to know more. "How are you?"
"Fine, Sir." She replied.
"Good, good. Now what have I told you? Call me Peter."
"Of course, Peter." She smiled at him. "Now, how can I help you."
"What do you know of the Museum of Alexandria?"
"Not much. The Greeks aren't my area."
"And yet you can speak it. Miss DeMode, the museum of Alexandria, which is actually in Egypt, composed the list of world wonders."
"You want me to go after the seven wonders of the world?" Miss DeMode inquired, sceptical.
"No. I want you to go after the eye of Helios."

A Woeful Tale of Misery, Murder, Pancakes and World Book Day Vouchers

Suzy raised her gun towards the door and prepared to blast the door to oblivion.

But I stopped her. "What if it hits one of the others?"

She nodded. "But what if they're in on it? What if one of them killed Sylvie, and faked the pine needles with the supply you knocked in the kitchen?"

"But who can we narrow it down to? It wasn't me, it wasn't you and it couldn't have been David."
"Well it couldn't have been Steve." She paused. "Could it?"
I suddenly felt guilty, like it was me who had killed Sylvie. "I'm sorry to say, but it seems he's the only who could have killed her. He didn't come into the room till a bit later on."
"But was he there when Elise screamed?"
I remained silent. She had a point, so I nodded down the stairs and we descended into the prison room. The printer whirred, so I grabbed the printout and read, "'Back so soon? I didn't realise I was such captivating company?'" I grinned. "It even has the word captivating in italics."
Suzy smiled back at me. "Look at us. Trapped in a basement with a psychopathic fir tree, by a betraying murderer, and we're laughing about italics."
The printer whirred. "'Less with the psychopathic.'" I read. "We could start a business like this, dictate it to the tree and print it instantaneously."
"I'll buy you a shop to start the business, if we escape."
"A big book shop, how about that?"
"Oh, talking of books, I've got some book vouchers for you." She handed me a wad of world book day vouchers. "My mum posted some to me, because she works in Waterstones."
I accepted gratefully and smiled. "I love bookshops."
The printer whirred. "'I hate them. They're graveyards.'" I read. "It's ironic really," I added, "because the only way you can communicate with us is by printing onto the skin of your deceased cousins."
"Poetic." The Christmas Tree said.
I and Suzy took a double take. "What?"
"I said 'poetic'." The Christmas Tree spoke.
"But you can speak!" Suzy pointed out the obvious.
"Obviously. We can murder, plot and break through doors, is it really a stretch of the imagination to presume we can speak?"
I tilted my head from one side to the other. "I see what you mean. Do you have a name?"
"Equalising me, are you?" The Christmas Tree asked.
"Answer the question."
"No. I do not have a name. We trees don't need them."
"Well I think we should name you." Suzy announced.
"If you must." The tree replied.
"We'll call you Douglas, because there's a type of fir tree called a Douglas."
"You can't give him my name!" I exclaimed.
"Why not? Two Douglas' won't hurt!"
"Considering that I'm a 'psychopathic' Christmas Tree and he carries a gun, I think we both will." Douglas the Christmas Tree announced.
We all laughed and I said, "Ah well, you'll just have to call me by my middle name, to prevent confusion."
"And what's that?"
"Duncan."
"Duncan?"
"Yeah. Duncan. What's wrong with that?"
"Your name is Douglas Duncan?"
"Yeah."
"Your parent's must have hated you."
I was about to reply when suddenly I worked it all out. "It was the pancake who did it!"
"What?" Demanded Suzy.
"I knocked the plate back and the sample of needles spilled onto the plate. When you put the pancake down on the plate, the needles got stuck to it. When Elise got the pancake, it attempted to kill her, for wanting to eat it, but instead killed Sylvie. It must have been the pancake which locked the door, and that's where the pine needles came from."
Suzy grinned. "I never thought I would, but I totally believe that."
I nodded. "But now, we need to escape."
"I've got it!" She took the world book day vouchers back from me, and went to get a vial of medicinal alcohol from one of the shelves. She picked up her gun, bid farewell to Douglas and then led me up the stairs to the door. She stuffed the vouchers into the lock and unscrewed the lid of the medicinal alcohol. "No!" I shouted. "That's fifty pounds of book discounts, to be used separately, you're about to burn!"
She didn't care, and like a terrible pyromaniac she burnt the book vouchers. I screamed at the smouldering ashes of the book discounts and then stopped as the door clicked open. "How did you know that would work?" I asked.
"John Pertwee did it in Spearheads from Space."
"Of course."
I backed her as we hurried across the hall and leapt into the back room, rolling across the floor to the weapons rack. The fifty calibre rifles weren't going to help us, so we both took a nine millimetre twenty two calibre handgun. "Once more unto the breach?" I asked.
"Aye aye Captain!" Suzy replied.
We raced out of the back room, into the hall then into the front room, pulling out our guns and firing them at the gigantic pancake monster, that stood over the shackled bodies of Steve, Elise and David.
David grinned when he saw us, through a hole carved by the flight of my bullet. The twenty two calibre bullets weren't very good but at close distance, and for such a big and thin target, they worked a treat. 

The pancake monster was gigantic, with fiery eyes and a mouth that was carved from a bubble on the peach coloured surface. It growled at me, so I fired several more shots, with each bang ripping away at my ear drums. Suzy took several more shots, until I could almost see the others through the bullet wounds. I shot three more rounds then ducked as the pancake fought back.
"You've got to be kidding!" Cried Suzy.
"As the midwife said to the goat!" I replied, as the pancake creature fired blasts of batter at us.
She ducked as a splatter of batter hit the painting of a burning sofa behind us. That was when David took his chance. He leapt out from behind the creature and raced towards us, jumping over the ruined sofa and to our side. "With me!" He shouted.
I and Suzy flanked him as the pancake monster advanced on us, and we backed out of the living room into the hall. He ran into the back room and me and Suzy stayed blasting the pancake monster with bullets. One bullet roared through the monster and smashed something behind. It was Steves antique Whimsy Collection, which he'd put up when his parents had come to hand him Bitzer, and had forgotten to take it down. I heard rustling in the back room and I fired three more shots. Then David raced behind us and whipped out an improved welding torch. The gas tank roared and flames erupted out of the nozzle, hitting the pancake right in the middle, making it look like one of my pancakes.
It started to burn more and more intensely and then suddenly, it exploded into flames. The whole thing burnt to a cinder and we stepped over it, kicking the flames out. Steve and Elise climbed up and walked over, Elise making sure we were ok, Steve checking on the Whimsy's.
"What on Earth just happened?" Elise demanded, pausing half way through her sentence to choose the right word.
I sat her down on the remains of the sofa and smiled. "What have you heard of the Paranormal Christmas Trees?"

To return Christmas 2014 with 'Firy of the Christmas Trees'

A Woeful Tale of Misery, Murder and Pancakes

Doctor Rasheed, which was quite a stereotypical name, had stocked up on biros, when I returned to the hospital, two months after Christmas. I presumed he'd watched Crime Night, as he seemed very suspicious of me and Steve. He checked me out, having applied more bandages to my neck, and we left the hospital, climbing into a taxi. Steve checked his phone as we drove, still worrying over whether or not to tell his parents Bitzer had disappeared. "Don't worry, Steve." I said. "They'll understand!"

"Will they really?" He replied, sceptically. "I'm so sorry, Mum and Dad, but I lost the really expensive dog you bought me when my best friend was attacked by a Paranormal Christmas Tree."

"Paranormal Christmas Tree. That's a good name." I made a note in my notebook.

"I could always buy a new dog and pretend it's the one they bought me."

"That's an awful idea!" I exclaimed. "I expect better from the leader of the Pine Resistance!" 

The Pine Resistance was the name Steve had come up for us, in our fight against the Christmas Trees. He was the only one who really liked the name.

"Well I haven't heard a better idea from you, or the others for that matter!"

The rest of the journey was silent, and as the taxi pulled to a stop outside the house we were renting, I flipped the driver a tenner and followed Steve into the hallway. Since we'd expressed our further interest to study the trees to Professor Wendall J Orchard, the kitchen of our house had been converted into a laboratory for further investigations. Which basically meant that Suzy would be flipping a pancake over a bunsen burner. 

David greeted me first, a welding torch in one hand and a welding mask over his face. "How's your neck?" He asked me.

"Good thanks." I replied. "How's the essay going?"

"Alright, but I'm taking a break. Building a miniature building for Suzy's architecture course."

I nodded, which hurt my neck, and made my way to see the budding architect. Suzy was cracking an egg right in the centre of a bowl, mixing it quickly, with the other ingredients then poured it onto the pan, held over the hob, not the bunsen burner. She grinned at me as I walked over. "The patient returns through the endless ether, his medical problems worsened by the standard of food!"
"What have you got against NHS food?" I demanded.
"Nothing. But it's not as good as this pancake!" She slid the pan cake onto a plate and handed it to me. "Remember, the first batch is always the worst."
"But that's your fifteenth batch." I heard David shout from another room.
Before I could take a bite, a large knock on the door sounded. I made a bemused face, we weren't expecting visitors, and Professor Orchard was on holiday.
"I'll get it," I heard Steve shout from the living room. I sighed, and looked down at the pancake, to see it having already got cold. "I'll bin this one," I said, "can you make me another?"
"Sure." She said. "Bin that and put the plate here."
I dropped the pancake into the bin and placed the plate on the worktop next to a petri dish of fir needles. I heard the sound of someone coming in, so I told Suzy I'd be back in a minute. As I turned around, I knocked my plate ever so slightly, so I pulled it back and entered the hallway.
Now, to be fully honest, accents aren't my area. I know all the names of all the accents, and have heard them all, but I can't match them.
So when the Steve and two rain covered ladies conversation came into earshot, I couldn't decide whether it was Irish, Scottish or French! Luckily, their names gave it away. Sylvie O'Connel and Elise O'Hallain. They were French. According to Steve, they were students of English, having moved here from the Village D'Poisson in the Jura and Alsace Region. I thought it was weird they'd come to Accrington, but I didn't voice my query.
They were on their way back from the university campus when Sylvie's car had broken down, about three miles down the road. They'd walked all the way down the road until they found the first student accommodation, our place, and now Sylvie was asking for either A: shelter or B: a phone to make the call to a garage. We offered her both, and she very politely accepted the latter, and, thanks to Suzy, Elise got my pancake.
Which is quite unfair on me, if you were to ask me.
"Thank you, very much." She said, obviously the English classes were paying off.
I nodded and told them we would be in the kitchen or the back room, should they need us. "Just give us a shout." I added.
I was playing with David's voltage stabiliser when Elise summoned us back. But she didn't give us a shout. Oh no! She gave us a scream.
Steve was the first out of the back room, running to the front room like the valiant leader of the Pine Resistance he is. I followed him, with David on my tail, the gas tank for his welding torch following us on a trolley. Suzy was already there, the frying pan in her hand, and the door was kicked open. Elise was cowering in the corner and the room was wrecked, with the furniture, the books and the magazines ripped up and thrown across the room. It looked like a bomb site, apart from one simple fact.
This time the corpse wasn't blow to smithereens. It was sliced to them.
The dead body of Sylvie O'Connel lay in the centre of the room, with hundreds and thousands of cuts and slices made by something evil, the clothes torn to smithereens.
And it was obvious what had caused the damage, only one thing it could have been. A Christmas Tree. You could see the pine needles that stuck out of the cadavers stomach and, should you have been an expert in- what google translate named-Habentes Abietem, you could have told the telltale sign of a paranormal Christmas Tree.
Steve went over to Elise, attempting to calm her, whilst I went into the back room and grabbed one of the guns that Professor Orchard had given us at Christmas. It was a double barrelled rifle, with half of the two barrels sawn off. This meant it could conform to a much higher standard of bullet, the one I chose going to a grand calibre of fifty. Had I been using a handgun, the best I could have got, in my opinion, would be a Desert Eagle, with action express rounds.
But enough about guns. I grabbed one for Suzy and, as I came back to the hallway, passed it to her. "Have you got the keys?" I asked.
"No. David had them last."
"They're in the fridge!" David shouted, his brilliant ears having picked up our conversation.
"Fridge?" I asked to Suzy.
"Well it makes sense." She replied.
"Can you explain to me?"
"The trees can't move to well in the cold climates. That's why Lapland and the like don't have gigantic armies of PC's roaming around."
"Police constables?" I asked, as I retrieved the keys from the fridge.
"Paranormal Christmas Trees."
I resisted the urge to ask why not call it PCT's as I went back into the hall and unlocked the seventeen locks that locked the door beneath the stairs. They all clicked open and I pulled the door, revealing the dark stairs that led to the prison beneath our house.
A few days after the battle of Dobbies, me, Orchard and Suzy were exploring the woods where I was first attacked. The way we saw it was that the arm that attempted to kill me must have had a body, thus it was probably still in the forest. And it was.
We managed to get it into the back of the van and it's been in the basement ever since. When the professor wan't on holiday, he'd interview it and study as to whether or not it had any weaknesses. I'd been worried it'd escape, and it seemed it had. But why kill a random person. That was my main question, and I was going to get my answer.
The basement was old and like a tunnel, with bricked off walls at either side and a curved roof. In the centre, within four spotlights, there was a Christmas Tree, with chains wrapped around it, sat patiently. It was called Specimen One. As the professor had pointed out, it wasn't a human being and wasn't likely to be respected, thus giving it a true name would be, in a way, equalising it to our level. And we didn't want that.
I pulled a chair up and asked Suzy to sit down on it. I pulled up another and sat on that as well. We looked at Specimen One, in a sincere, dangerous way. There was a filing cabinet on the far wall with one file in it. Suzy went and got it and brought it back, flicking off the strap and opening the leather pages. Inside it were sixty two sheets of compressed paper, thirty one filled with the Professors terrible handwriting and the other thirty one filled with typed up versions. Suzy started to read from the seventh typed sheet. "'Specimen seems to have terrible rage issues. This is evident from the branch stump. It would seem specimen one was trapped and, when attempting to free itself, broke the branch off, with signs of a violent impulse, when it realised what it had done.' That was written from looking at your stump alone, Specimen One. It's obvious you're violent. It's obvious you can work yourself into a frenzy. But so violent that you'd kill a stranger?"
Specimen One remained silent.
"Why did you kill the girl, Specimen One?" I demanded."Tell us, or we'll hurt you, real bad."
Silence.
"Why did you kill the girl, Specimen One?" I demanded again. "Do you want to die?"
Yet again, the tree said nothing.
I didn't ask again. If it failed to answer twice, it would fail to answer a thrid time. I nodded to Suzy and she produced her secret weapon. If you were to take a lump of calcium and bond it with nitric acid, you would find yourself with calcium nitrate. This compund is commonly used in fertilisers, although it has other uses, such as waste water cleaming.It's purpose is to destroy the metabolism for sulfates, which is, apparently, quite important.
And you'll never guess what! In some cases, according to 'realtreetalk.blogspot.co.uk,' some Christmas Tree water has gone weird, with little sulfates popping up all over it.  Thus, the calcium nitrate would extinguish the sulfates which, in turn, would not help the moisture and hurt the tree.

But the tree had been subjected to this torture before, and it didn't want to experience it again.

It started to shake, over and over again, until, all of a sudden, there was a ding. Suzy went over to the printer and took out a sheet. I had a look at it and smiled. "That's what they all say."
I looked again. 'I did nothing.' The Professor's tree translation system was a master stroke. He hadn't explained how it properly worked, yet, but as long as it did, I didn't care.
Suzy read out the next answer. "'I swear, I did nothing.' What rubbish!"
"Come on, Specimen One. Be straight with me." I said. "Why did you kill the girl?"
I heard the whirring of the printer. Suzy handed me the printout. 'Why don't you believe me?' It read.
"You really think we're going to believe that?"
"'You believe Christmas Trees can kill.'" Suzy read.
"Because that's the truth!" I replied.
The printer whirred one more. "'If you believe the truth, why don't you believe me?'" Suzy quoted, with a melancholy tone to her voice.
A strange idea came into my head. What if he wasn't lying? What if, in all honesty, he hadn't escaped and killed Sylvie? That begged an obvious question. Who had?
I dragged Suzy out and up the stairs, stopping before we got to door. "Look Suzy," I started.
"No, you look. I don't think he did it." She replied.
"You don't?"
"No, I don't."
"Brilliant, neither do I."
"You don't! Superb! I guess we just need to sell that to the others."
I reached for the doorknob, but suddenly filled with despair. One of two things must have happened. A: the others had come to the same conclusion as us or B: the murderer had taken control, because the door wouldn't open and we couldn't escape.
I turned to Suzy. "We're trapped."