Defective

buffoon was powerful? He had envied the man's command, admired his ruthlessness but he had been wrong. This man, who he had hoped and come to believe was his real father, was just like the other one, a useless drunk.

  He hurled his anger at the man, who staggered back a few steps.

  "Hey little fella, I don't feel so well," the Landlord slurred, swaying to and fro where he stood.

  Mixer stamped his foot on the bag of onions, his arms straight by his sides. He waggled his fingers against his thighs and mentally threw everything he had at him. The Landlord had time only to wonder why he seemed to be standing half inside a floor before he passed out.

  It took Mixer a moment to gain his balance. His body felt strange; larger. He realized he was looking at a spot on the back barn door he'd only seen from several feet below. He looked down. His feet had become enormous! He took a step, stumbled a bit but soon got the hang of it. He practiced for a minute then walked over to the dugout. With one foot he pushed the little body onto the onion pile then lifted the lid and let it drop across the opening. He spun around, left the barn and strode across the yard. Titania would be the first to go.

  ___

  After checking by the creek and with Jelly if she’d seen Mixer, Santa slowly returned to the barn. Mixer liked to play in the dirt so he could be anywhere. When she finally reached the barn she found it barred from the inside. Her heart pounding, she ran round to the front and inside but neither Mixer nor the Landlord was there; only the empty tea jar and the cup and saucer stood on the table. From the top of the woodstove she picked up the heavy pan.

  ___

  Porkchop and PC Pierre kissed for a long time. Porkchop had been looking at her boots, about to speak, about to tell him that she knew about their father and Marvellous and everything. Instead, she had stepped forward, tilted her face upwards and kissed him. It took him a moment to overcome his surprise but the Constable kissed her back and didn't stop even when a flash of lightning lit up the sky around them.

  ___

  Jones was getting hot and impatient. They’d been out in the woods for hours and everything Bull had sniffed out had turned out to be nothing.

  "Maybe your nose is off," Jones said.

  "My nose isn’t off," Bull said irritably. He'd woken up with a stuffy-headed feeling but Porkchop had hustled him and Jones out of the barn before he'd been able to ask Jelly for something that might help his allergies.

  They now stood in a shelter of small pines on a shelf overlooking the back field. He saw the corn plants whipping back and forth in the wind. The wind shifted and Bull lifted his head.

  "C’mon," said Bull, hurrying down the path toward the field. "Stay with me, don’t run ahead."

  ___

  Mixer stepped into Pater’s house and banged the door shut behind him but it didn’t latch. He headed for Titania's bed but was distracted by the slender foot sticking out of Pater's cubbyhole. He walked over and twitched the curtain aside, admiring the way he was able to manipulate the hands so well already.

  "Who are you?"

  Marvellous tightened her fingers around the pruning knife in her hand. He didn't recognize her! She opened her eyes. In that instant she saw in his face that he didn't know who she was. After all this time, after all she'd been through he didn't remember her mother and that made Marvellous angry. She brought the pruning knife up and in the moment that she dropped her disguise to give the Landlord one chance to see his daughter before he died at her hand, Mixer's thoughts came flooding into her brain. She immediately jerked the knife back. She was sure that she had retracted the knife in time but the body toppled over onto her anyway. Santa stood in his place holding the frying pan with both hands like a bat.

  The last thing Mixer remembered before crashing to the floor was that the woman in the bed looked like the woman in the Landlord's thoughts.

  "Marvellous! You’re back." Santa put the pan down on the table and looked around. "Where’s Titania?"

  "Sleeping like a baby. You made the tea just strong enough. Your grandfather’s asleep in the outhouse."

  Santa, adrenaline still rushing through her after bashing the Landlord over the head, giggled.

  Marvellous rolled the body off her and onto the floor then kneeled down to inspect him. She felt his pulse; it was rapid. She scanned his unconscious mind and saw tendrils of green and black flow across it. She shivered. If Mixer had taken over the Landlord, where was the Landlord?

  "Santa, knock it off," Marvellous said standing up. Santa stopped giggling. She was satisfied that Mixer would be out cold for a while. Maybe she could think of a way to return them to their right forms without the children knowing. "Where’s Mixer?"

  Santa looked worried. "I don’t know. He disappeared while I was seeing to the Landlord. He’s not in the barn."

  "We have to find him." She grabbed Santa by the arm and dragged her out the door. They ran to the barn and quickly searched it but couldn't find Mixer. They unbarred the back door and Santa rang the mealtime bell to alert the others before she and Marvellous headed for the fields.

  ___

  The clang of a bell woke him. He groaned as he stood up, rubbing the back of his head where Santa had hit him. He saw the frying pan on the table and picked it up; hefted it in his hand. He left the house and loped for the barn, his head still aching. In the distance he could see the figures of his brothers, sisters and Marvellous methodically searching every row.

  Inside the barn it was quiet. He strode across the floor and, with one foot, kicked off the lid that covered the dugout. He reached in, grabbed the little boy by the arm and hauled him out. He started to carry him to the table near the stove but the boy was not cooperative. The boy cried and sobbed and wriggled and with the additional weight of the frying pan, he began to feel unsteady again.

  He grabbed the boy by the seat of his pants, raised the frying pan and batted him across the room with it. He laughed as the boy landed on the table, shattering the tea cup and saucer. He picked him up from the table and batted the boy with the pan again. This time, the boy hit the wood stove and fell to the ground where he lay still.

  In the fields Marvellous looked up and back at the barn. "Wait here," she told Jelly, Forest, Narrow and Santa. She could see Bull and Jones moving quickly through the bush towards them in the distance. "Make sure they wait here, too," she said, nodding towards the boys. The others looked towards their brothers and when they looked back, Marvellous was gone.

  ___

  Mixer walked over to the stove and was about to pick the boy up again when he heard the barn door open and shut. He spun around and saw Marvellous standing in front of him.

  "Leave him alone," she commanded.

  She slowly made her way over to the stove. He retreated a few steps into the corner behind it. She could feel his malevolent eyes on her. She stopped and glanced at Mixer's body; it lay still in a pool of blood.

  He was seething. He had been wrong about the Landlord and now he realized he'd been wrong about this woman. She wasn't harmless; as he watched her he wasn't sure whether the Landlord's physical strength would be enough. He got angrier.

  She bent over the body and felt for a pulse; there was one but it was weak.

  "I wanted you dead but not this way," she whispered.

  "What's that?"

  She looked up slowly, knowing what she'd see. A spoiled little boy, disguised as her father, playing around with power; power that he didn't know how to use or control.

  "If you go back I can help you," she said to him.

  Before she was able to block him she felt him scan her thoughts. "We are brother and sister," he said with surprise.

  "Different sides of the same coin," said Marvellous.

  His eyes narrowed. He didn't think; he flew at her with the frying pan raised. She sidestepped him neatly and he bounced off the wall and back towards her. She stepped away again and he crashed into the table. He lay atop it for a moment catching his breath. This body wasn't as agile as he'd firs
t thought.

  Desperately he threw his mind at her. Marvellous wasn't expecting it and the force sent her crashing into the stove. It was enough. He swung the frying pan once and she collapsed to the floor beside Mixer's body.

  He picked her up and slung her across his broad shoulder, leaving one hand free to carry the frying pan and the other to climb up the ladder to the loft. His headache was gone and he felt new strength, as though he was carrying no weight at all.

  He had wanted so badly to do this to someone for such a long time but he’d never been strong enough. He thought of all the times his plans had been thwarted; all the times his schedule was not his own; all the times he'd wanted to physically lash out and hurt and hurt and hurt. He smiled and laughed as he tied Marvellous’ hands, blindfolded her and gagged and bound her mouth. He tied up her midsection in a blanket with rope then looped the end through the rails and loosely tied it off. Then he waited.

  ___

  Jelly pulled a small head of garlic from a row, broke it open and peeled a clove. She told Bull to chew it slowly before swallowing. The massive odour cut through the fog in his head and he could now smell the Landlord even more strongly than when he'd first caught whiff of him while and Jones were in the woods. It was overpowering.

  "That's it," said Bull to the others and started for the barn. "Stay here."

  He ran to the back doors, his shoulders down, and rammed his way through. The weathered wood splintered under his weight and Bull