The Ghoul of Christmas Past

and cranny would take him days and he doubted Mary had that long so he was going to have to be clever.
She was taken at ground level, and the sounds of battle drifting on the air were coming from far away, so there was nothing happening anywhere near where he was. Most likely, the fighting did not involve Mary, unless Frank and the ninjas had come upon the ghoul and found her with him.
It had to be the ghoul too, Michael decided. Until now, he could have believed the ghoul drowned, or was yet to make it back here after going in the river, but Charles Dickens would have lasted seconds against the ninjas. Michael could recall Tempest talking about tiny Poison fighting an army of clowns a while ago and how she wasn’t to be underestimated. That meant they were fighting the ghoul and since the battle had been raging for half a minute already, they were not having an easy time of it.
Either way, if they had found the ghoul with Mary, she was probably going to be saved by them, but he needed to be sure. Breaking into a run again, Michael’s pace was less than the sprint it had been but still fast enough to make him hurt. The source of the fighting was his destination, but in the otherwise silence of the basement, the sounds were bouncing between the equipment and echoing against giant storage tanks he could see lining one wall. Combined, he was trying to pinpoint a direction to head, but having a hard time doing so.
After a full minute of running along passageways between machines and generators and other items of equipment he couldn’t even identify, he was once again out of breath and wanting to slow. Frustration ruled his head and heart, but just as he wanted to scream at the sky, he rounded a ten-foot-high block of machinery and a cry of pain from either Poison or Mistress Mushy lit the air.
It was clearer than anything he heard before and gave him a distinct direction. Ten seconds later, he saw them. He wanted to increase his pace, but there was barely anything left in his tank now, pushing himself to keep going was the best he could do.
‘Frank!’ His yell when he saw the bookshop owner, caught the smaller man’s attention. Frank had stepped into sight and then vanished again thirty yards ahead where the thin passage between machines opened out a little.
Cries of ‘Waaaah! and ‘Hatchaaaa!’ were a constant from the four black clad fighters. They were giving all they had, but though Michael knew they were in the fight of their lives, he could focus only on finding Mary. His weary legs carried him to the end of the passage and there he got his first really good look at the ghoul.
Hatchett was lying against the side of a forklift truck, clearly in pain and without the weapons he came in with. Bob and Mistress Mushy were doing what they could to pin the ghoul back but could not risk getting close enough for him to grab them.
In the space of a second and a half, he saw Mistress Mushy swing a five-foot wooden staff in a twirl of precise movements which ended with a swipe at the creature’s head. At the same time, Bob went in low with his nunchucks, aiming to fell the ghoul by taking out a leg.
The ghoul caught Mistress Mushy’s staff with one giant hand, the sound like that of a baseball slamming into a catcher’s mitt at high speed. His hand had to be almost the same size too. The blow to his right shin from a nunchuck moving at high speed made the ghoul roar, but otherwise had little effect as he tore the staff from Mistress Mushy’s hands.
Now weaponless, the young woman flipped herself backward end over end to get away as the giant came after her. Bob tried to fell the giant again, drawing its attention, and then Poison appeared. She climbed onto a bank of machinery so she could attack from above.
They would win, Michael was confident, and they would gain little if he pitched in to help them. Believing he was more likely to just get in the way, he grabbed Frank’s shoulder, jolting the man who jumped at the sudden and unexpected presence.
Between laboured breaths, Michael shouted, ‘Where’s Mary?’
Frank’s black hood was gone, and he had a nasty cut to the right side of his forehead Michael saw when the bookshop owner turned his way. Like Michael, Frank was gasping for air, effort and adrenalin placing demands on his body that would make anyone out of breath.
Frank sucked in a lungful of air so he could reply, ‘Haven’t seen her,’ he gasped, opting for brevity. ‘I thought she went back to the car?’
Grimacing at the news, which was both good and bad in many ways, Michael pushed on. ‘They grabbed her,’ he shot over his shoulder, certain that was the case even though she wasn’t with the ghoul.
Michael did not want to abandon the team trying to contain and defeat the giant menace, but finding Mary had to take priority. There would be stairs to get him up to the next floor; he just had to find them.

The Big Reveal. Saturday, December 24th 2303hrs
‘It was a dream of mine even when I was at business school,’ explained Norton. ‘I wanted to run a big business, to be the man in charge, but once I got there, I saw how small my dream was. I thought I would be the glorious leader, taking the firm by the hand to guide it into a new era of profitability, but I was wrong. I wasn’t the leader. Oh, sure I got to make decisions on a daily basis, but the shareholders could veto them at any time, even when it