Chapter 32 #3
“Come on, come on, come on!” Nimmie chanted, glancing down briefly.
“They’re climbin’ tha walls!” A gray hand twice the size of Nimmie’s foot with long yellowed nails emerged and gripped the brick.
Tinkerton sprang behind Nimmie and slammed the shovel’s flat end onto the gnome’s gripping hand.
Another gnome appeared on the opposite side, and Blinkem struck its hand with the rake.
The gnomes screeched, and the dragon swooped down, slamming into the ground to block Alice.
“Where’s the Captain?” Blinkem shouted.
“In the barn, I didn’t wind him!” Tinkerton shouted back, hitting the hand of the gnome as it re-emerged. Finally, Nimmie cut the rope loose. Just as a third gnome was about to brace itself against the other two that had emerged, it slipped, taking the other two down below the opening of the well.
“Now! Get the Captain!” Blinkem yelled. Alice ran around the dragon, which promptly bounded, repositioning behind her.
She took Tinkerton’s shovel as he passed and waited for the gnome’s hand to reappear.
In a moment, three gnomes were howling and gargling, bracing against one another to emerge from the well.
Fear rushed through Alice’s blood. Their crooked fangs were far more terrifying than the sea monster.
She swung the shovel, but in her fear, she closed her eyes, and the shovel chipped the brick of the well, missing the gnome.
The gnome’s white eyes, under its enormous bulbous forehead, widened, and it hissed through a sharp grin. “Alice!”
Alice’s body told her to run, but she just stood dumbfounded, holding a shovel as a creature from a nightmare spoke her name—just as another voice had in the dream she’d just awakened from.
She felt suddenly as though she might faint.
As shock took over, her ears were deaf to the sounds around her, and Nimmie grabbed her and dragged her away.
The clomping feet of the captain came, and at the well’s edge, he said, “Stand back.” His legs adjusted and his body shot up on his springs.
“Do as he says!” Tinkerton shouted, and he and Blinkem, who’d been keeping the gnomes at bay with rake swats, retreated.
The captain’s legs extended his body upward as he stretched his arms out wide, and then, with a sudden clang, started to spin so his locked metal arms created a horizontal propeller directly over the well.
The roof post closest to him cracked and broke free under the tremendous spin of his metal arms.
The gnomes howled ferociously as the metal arms pulverized them, causing one to drop down and the other two, who took the weight of the blow, to bend forward against the well as the captain’s arms smashed over and over into their backs.
Then, he abruptly changed the direction of his spinning, knocking the two backward by their faces.
Alice looked away. She saw only a glimpse of one gnome’s bulging forehead smash inward from the force of the blow.
Somehow, the creatures managed to crawl or fall back into the well.
But one escaped the whirlwind assault, then scurried over the others and emerged, tottering violently over the ground, half on fists that swept the ground and half on large clawed feet, toward Blinkem.
“Blinkem!” Alice screamed. He turned with wide eyes and saw the gnome approaching.
The instant the gnome leaped with its teeth exposed to land on top of Blinkem, his body shrank into his clothing. The gnome thrashed at the garments. Alice watched, but there was no blood. Nothing. Blinkem was gone!
Then, at the edge of the road beyond the well, a white rabbit fled from the scene. Alice, now in complete shock, heard Nimmie shouting wildly, “I got him!” as she converged on the gnome that searched through Blinkem’s clothing and began to pummel it. Alice looked away at the first sign of blood.
The gnome Nimmie fought managed to scurry from her, hurling itself over the well’s edge.
Then, abruptly, the dragon darted from around Alice and dove into the well.
In a blaze of blue light, followed by smoke, there were sharp, explosive, agonized screams, and then the sound of pecking and scratching.
Alice began to step away as crunching bone and ripping flesh echoed from below.
“That will be her fill for a good long while now,” Nimmie said in disbelief before erupting with laughter. “We did it! What are the odds?” Nimmie jumped up and down. “I, we, stopped the gnomes!” She looked to Tinkerton to join in the celebration. Tinkerton, disheveled and sweating, smiled faintly.
Nimmie didn’t care. She ran over to Tinkerton and with a hug lifted him slightly off the ground. “Cap’n is amazing, ya genius wizard!” Tinkerton relaxed into a sort of laugh and cry at the same time.
Alice waited, and finally the dragon emerged, her bluish black beak smeared with fresh kill.
She slithered up the post of the well canopy and flew into the sky with a booming battle squawk, soaring into the night.
Just then, the roof of the well collapsed from its unstable posts, and the remaining flower basket rolled to Alice’s feet.
Pretty white flowers were painted red with blood, another chilling connection to her dreams. Or was this a horrifying portent of what was to come?