The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

swept into the kitchen. Twisting her neck, Meli watched as he poured himself a large scotch and threw the burning liquid down his throat without even blinking.
    Topping it up he said. “And you can take that stupid grin off your face. Don’t you ever do that to me again.” Although his words were harsh, the whisky had obviously loosened his lips as they were curling slightly at the edges. “I have never, never had a more grotesque experience.” He took a sip of his drink as he sank down on a chair.
    “On a scale of one to ten, the stench was twenty-five. If you thought it smelled bad outside the door, you should have sampled it from the inside.” His whole body visibly shuddered. “It had a stronger punch than Mike Tyson. I wouldn’t have been surprised to come across a dozen rotting carcasses of dead sheep, cattle and fish, crawling with maggots. In fact,” his glass was tossed in the air, nearly spilling the contents, “they could have been there, stuffed behind a sofa or something, or beneath the mountains of rubbish just strewn everywhere: on the floor, on the worktops, the furniture. It was too bloody dark and murky to see much, but the kitchen floor felt like the bottom of a grease pot, and the toilet...” He threw his stricken eyes dramatically at the ceiling. “Well, I can’t even begin to describe it. Even the flies wanted out. I almost threw up several times.” This recollection caused him to take another slug from his glass. “There was no way a burglar would be in there, not if he was in his right mind. Oh, and the cobwebs!” Meli restrained the urge to smirk at the vision of his dusty crown. “I don’t think she uses upstairs, not unless the spiders can cast their webs overnight as I practically needed an axe to get through them.”
    “What was all that noise, just before you and Quassi came out?” Meli prompted when his voice trailed off.
    Broody eyes fixed on hers. “That confounded dog, suddenly leaped under my feet and tripped me up. I almost fell into …. Well I wouldn’t even know what it was.” He glanced down at his hands, as though checking he had washed off ‘whatever it was’. Rubbing his hands down his trousers, as though afraid some remnant might be lingering there, invisible to the naked eye, he glared across at Quassi, who was lying in the corner, licking nervously at his lips. Seeing his masters eyes on him, he sat bolt upright and frantically began to whip his tail across the tiles.
    “I’m telling you, that woman is a health hazard and totally bonkers.”
    Yes, yes, at last, he’s realised, Meli cheered in her head as Cal poured some more whisky down his throat.
    “Did you hear the way she was talking to herself? And taking the pitchfork as a weapon.” Cal’s words were beginning to sound slightly slurred.
    “And we didn’t even get to speak to her about the milk float,” Meli threw in.
    “Wow, can we come with you next time?” George’s voice floated down the stairs.
    “You weren’t supposed to be listening,” Meli remarked coldly. “Go back upstairs and play.”
    “But mum, we wanted to go out and make some changes to the assault course.”
    “Go on then, just stop eavesdropping.” The boys tumbled across the room, trying to conceal their cache of ‘borrowed’ items that were dangling from under their jumpers, or escaping from their pockets. Meli restrained herself from asking what they had. No doubt she’d know soon enough.
    With a calculated flip of his neck, Cal hurled the last of the whisky down his eager hatch, before moving to sit on the sofa. “I needed that to clean out the tubes,” he said, as though he needed to justify his alcohol consumption. Three minutes later he was snoring, his head nodding over the newspaper he had spread open on his lap.
    Dinner was ready, but Meli decided not to wake him just yet. It was already so overcooked, that re-heating it in the microwave later couldn’t do it any more harm. Quietly, Meli slipped out into the garden to see what the boys were up to. They were really taking this squirrel thing seriously. She hadn’t seen them stick with anything with such enthusiasm before. At that moment the boys were fixing up a section of net curtain between two posts, that looked rather familiar.
    “Pass me the hammer, Dave the Grave,” George gave his brother a lop sided grin.
    “Here you are then, George the Morgue,” David replied chirpily.
    “What’s all this then?” Meli asked, striding