SPOILED 2 - part four

‘If you’ll just pop yourself onto the scales there, young Lucas, there’s a good lad.’

Lucas did as Dr Nightingale so softly instructed. He might not have been acclimatising to these regular clinical inspections particularly well but at least the doc was a hell of a lot kinder to him than the dormitory guards, and that took much of the trepidation out of Lab visits.

‘Two four five pounds,’ the doctor read the digital display on the scales aloud. ‘Very good, very good.’ He clapped his thick, hairy hands together and rubbed happily. ‘Closing in on two-fifty. Ah, you’re doing grand.’

Lucas had never been fat before. He’d excelled at long jump and short distance running at school, and had generally kept himself in good shape after graduating. But now each day pushed at the limitations of his stomach; it got stuffed ever the tighter with every trip to the mess hall. During communal shower times he’d soap up the newly formed pounds that sat in his stretching midriff, unable to understand why this was being done to him. He found himself having to reach further and further outwards to wash all of his warping skin. The beginnings of folds had even begun to emerge where his belly met his hips - soap would often gather along these fresh creases of flab. On top of that, a hairy triangle of fat was beginning to expand around his penis.

‘Uh, thanks, Doctor,’ he replied out of a sense of obligation.

‘Now if you could just remove your shirt and your trousers there,’ Dr Nightingale carried on.

Perhaps it was Lucas’s imagination, but it appeared as though the doctor himself had also found a little extra chunk since their last meeting. There was a fresh snugness to the man’s midriff; evident from the stretch of his shirt.

As always, Lucas did as he was told.

‘Settling in alright now?’ the doc asked.

‘I guess,’ Lucas responded, unbuttoning down to his underwear. He’d given up asking what all this was for - being kept in the dorms with so many other growing guys, fed to bursting point each day, all of the medical weigh-ins and check-ups. No point in asking when he’d be allowed home. Reece was right: They were never going to answer those kinds of questions.

Dr Nightingale listened to Lucas’s heartbeat, as was standard, and took the young man’s pulse.

‘All good,’ he murmured. ‘Teeny tiny bit elevated, but that’s to be expected as you gain weight. Lucas, you might feel your heart pump a little harder when you climb stairs or things of that nature, okay? As you get heavier, physical exertion is going to take more of a toll on your body. You may find you get out of breath a wee bit faster as we progress with your size. Where you’re taking on more and more fat, the body has to work harder to exert the excess weight, but I don’t want you worrying, alright? It’s all perfectly normal.’

Being told not to worry was a fruitless cause for Lucas, though it was something of a mantra from the doctor.

‘How much bigger do I need to get?’ he asked, knowing full well by now that a concise answer wouldn’t be forthcoming.

Lucas had seen the size of some of the fatboys in the dorms. There were huge ones among them; hips and bellies and asses spilling out all over the place. Even Reece was a good deal fatter than he, and only got rounder over time. Then there were the guards, their massive weight distributed in a totally different way… Some of those brutes wouldn’t have looked out of place carrying Atlas stones around.

‘Ohhh, you’ve a long way to go yet, boy, hoh hoh,’ Nightingale chuckled, producing a tape measure from the pocket of his stretched cardigan. ‘Let’s see here now…’

The scent of the doctor’s aftershave was becoming familiar, almost strangely nostalgic to Lucas, and he found a lot of tension unknotting itself across his body when the older man would measure and prod and feel at it. It was all done gently, sympathetically, even.

‘Waist 38 inches, good, good… Belly 45…’ The physician broke into a Gaelic-sounding hum as he wound the tape measure around Lucas’s thighs and across his back. At least it wasn’t goddamned Enya. He tapped short little notes into an iPad on the metal cabinet beside him. ‘No troubles with your eating? Appetite all okay?’ he asked.

‘I mean, I’m pretty much stuffed all day long, Doctor,’ Lucas told him. ‘It’s a struggle. I wish-‘

‘Yes, it can be hard, I know,’ Nightingale broke across him. ‘But you will find it easier as your stomach expands, I promise. It’s a wonderful organ that way. It has the incredible capacity to keep stretching and stretching, hoh hoh.’

This wasn’t exactly uplifting to hear. Once more, Lucas was near positive there’d be no satisfactory response to his next question, but he tried anyway,

‘Do you think, once I’m big enough, that they’ll pick me to go to The Palace?’

Dr Nightingale’s hand stilled over the iPad.

‘… Who told you that?’ he asked.

Perhaps Lucas shouldn’t have named names, but he spoke before thinking, ‘Reece said that’s what happens. At least for some of the guys. Like, if we’re good or well-behaved or…’

He noted a slight darkening across the doctor’s usually cheerful features.

‘You’d do well to find better company than that Reece boy, you know,’ he said in an uncharacteristically serious tone.

Lucas kinda felt bad. ‘He told me you don’t like him.’

‘Did he, now?’ Nightingale resumed his note-taking. ‘Well, let’s just say, whenever there’s a disturbance to the peace around these parts, that boy is always curiously nearby. But he’s a clever young devil. Put your clothes back on now, lad.’

‘Yes, Doc.’ Lucas did as he was told. ‘But if you don’t… get along with Reece, couldn’t you just, like, send him home or something?’

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ the doctor responded flatly, not looking up from his notes.

‘I mean, couldn’t you just… send any of us home? We don’t have to-‘

‘It’s not -‘ Dr Nightingale spoke up in a heated tone, before stopping himself short. He cleared his throat and toyed needlessly with his glasses a moment before concluding with, ‘That’ll be all for today, young man.’

Lucas felt a certain amount of guilt, sensing he’d pushed a button he shouldn’t have, and in doing so bringing this session to an untimely close.

‘Oh… Okay, Doctor,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry…’

As Lucas made for the door that would lead back out into the network of endless white corridors that made up The Lab, a nearby beefy escort waiting to take him back to the dorms via the tram system, the doctor looked up from his tablet and added,

‘Just don’t go getting yourself into trouble. You steer clear of that Reece fellow now. I… You don’t want the likes of him dragging you down. Not when you’re doing so well, okay, Lucas?’

And he accompanied this with a bittersweet smile from behind his perfunctory glasses and bushy beard.

****

Some pros to the sun not only emerging but positively beaming from behind the dissipated storm clouds above Sweet and Dey as they followed the ingrained tracks inland included the drying of the former detectives’ sea-sodden clothes, as well as staving off what could easily have turned into pneumonia. Cons, however, encompassed much sweating, and the arrival of afternoon bugs the deeper into the overgrown surroundings they went. Though the brick-tiled pathway underfoot - scored by the old tire tracks - still guided the way (just about), there was no denying that things had gotten significantly more… natural.

Arthur swiped at fronds determined to brush against his face. ‘Bloody plants,’ he grumbled. ‘Shoulda brought a machete or summing.’

‘I know,’ Manni agreed, waving gnats from his periphery. ‘Can’t say I was expecting this. The way Law talked about The Island made it sound like there was still shit going on here, you know, like… civilisation.’

‘That’s if this is The Island,’ Sweet pointed out, resurrecting a discussion point they’d bandied around several times since arriving.

Dey just sighed in response.

‘True,’ was all he could muster. ‘You think I should be filming this?’

He’d captured a little of the welcome centre on his phone earlier.

Arthur shrugged. ‘Not much to see, lad. It’s like you said: Film when there’s something to film. Not sure this counts - just us following the yellow brick road.’

‘Hmm.’

Manni was too hot to put much effort into laughing. He merely kept trudging forward, carrying the backpack which got progressively lighter each time Arthur required another snack.

They kept on trekking. Dey didn’t know how long they’d been at it anymore, since he was loathed to keep checking the time on his phone, trying as he might to keep it switched off in order to conserve battery power.

When the day dragged on and just kept getting hotter, Manni spoke up,

‘Arthur, what are we going to do?’

‘What d’you mean?’ Sweet replied, still grouchily batting at leaves.

‘I mean here, now. We’ve got no way home, supplies aren’t gonna last forever. We don’t even know where we are.’

Sweet turned to his partner and took Dey’s sweaty hand in his own, his face softening. ‘Hey, we’re gonna be alright, don’t you worry.’

‘But-‘

‘It’s like we said,’ Arthur went on, adjusting his glasses. ‘First thing we do is see where this goes. Then search for supplies, shelter, try and keep our heads down. We take it one step at a time, okay? Then we can get our bearings and come up with a plan to get home.’

He saw that his tone was taking effect; Manni nodded and appeared a little more placated.

‘For all we know there could be an old signal tower here, or comms to the mainland, or any number of things,’ Sweet went on. He squeezed his muscled partner’s hand tighter. ‘It’s gonna be alright, I promise. I ain’t gonna let you down again.’

Ever since getting captured by The Rookery due to the slowness of his extraneous bulk, Arthur had regularly revisited the memory: Running from guards, lagging behind, Manni clipping off, then hands grabbing at Sweet, pulling him back.

’GO!’ he’d called out to his partner.

The stricken look across Dey’s face was etched firmly into Arthur’s recollection…

‘Arthur, you didn’t let me down-‘ Manni began now, but was stopped by the raising of Sweet’s chubby hand.

‘Hang about,’ Sweet interrupted sharply. ‘Something… Maybe something up ahead.’

Dey squinted and followed the big man’s gaze.

‘I don’t…’

But then he saw it. Through the dense wall of trees and foliage. Just a brown silhouette, but it was large.

‘… What is it?’

They pressed on, both men instinctively slowing their footsteps, a shared sense of precaution taking hold.

It was another building, again draped in nature, but far larger than the welcome centre. Out in front a severely busted minibus lay on its side, gutted, quite apart from the tracks.

‘It almost looks like…’ Manni wasn’t sure he wanted to vocalise the thought. It just seemed a tad ridiculous.

But in absorbing the brown wood and glass panelling, the A-frames and retro stylings, the surrounding palms and pools, complete with long-snuffed tiki torches, Arthur could only conclude, ‘It’s a resort.’

Upon approach to the once-grand reception, it became clear to the partners that this place had suffered in much the same vein as the welcome centre: Broken windows, greenery creeping in, walls, ceilings and partitions often destroyed or, as had been witnessed prior, scratched deeply by some large animal.

In spite of its transatlantic location, a Polynesian theme seemed to have been the predominant design language deployed here; broken tiki masks adorned rattan-panelled walls, and what looked to be a once and former bubbling water feature surrounded by plastic flowers and fake birds of paradise now stood rather sad and dishevelled in the centre of the space. Crumpled, faded leis made up of mock-petals lay about here and there.

‘So it was like a holiday getaway of some kind?’ Manni asked, half to himself as he and Arthur picked about the reception.

Sweet’s heavy footsteps crunched against something he assumed was broken glass until he looked down. Large metal bowls on carved wooden plinths had each been knocked to the ground, spilling their contents.

‘Sweets,’ he noted, frowning in curiosity.

‘Uhhh, yeah, that’s you,’ Dey replied, wondering if Arthur had gotten too much sun.

‘No, not Sweet,’ Arthur said. ‘Sweets, as in plural. Look.’

Littered all across the ruins of the mid-century patterned carpet were hundreds of candies, some hard and wrappered, others now melted into the fabric beneath.

‘Welcome goodies for new arrivals, I guess?’ Dey suggested.

‘Yeah but this many?’ Sweet countered. ‘Bloody hundreds of ‘em.’

Manni’s perfect eyebrows knotted. ‘Mmm.’

And the theme continued along the countertop nearby where hotel staff must have, at one time, greeted guests; open bins had been excavated out of the thick wood, with labels in an old-fashioned font stencilled above. ‘Cookies’, ‘Muffins’, ‘Eclairs’ read some, others remained less legible. Here was the first visible signage Sweet and Dey had come across.

‘More welcome snacks,’ Arthur stated, lamenting that the bins were long empty. He could’ve murdered a muffin or five. ‘They certainly wanted the customers to eat their fill, don’t you reckon?’

Manni had to agree. He nodded, inspecting behind the reception counter, finding only a small empty office and nothing of value. ‘Yeah, alright,’ he said. ‘So you’re thinking this place was ex-Rookery, then?’

‘Fits the M.O,’ Sweet replied, looking out through the brown-tinted glass frontage to the empty, drained pool. Between wrecked sunbeds were what appeared to be concession carts, dozens of them. More snacks. ‘This’d be a nice isolated place to bring blokes for fattening up.’

Dey was going to comment further when something caught his eye.

‘Arthur,’ he said, ‘over here, down the hallway.’

Sweet lumbered sweatily over to his partner. Manni was leant down before a series of multiple freestanding metal boxes: Vending machines.

‘I think…,’ Dey began, ‘some of these have survived, you know. Might just be some edible candies still inside them.’

This was music to Arthur’s ears, since he’d already scoffed much of the bananas and biscuits from the backpack and his stomach had yet to cease emitting dangerously loud grumbles for some time now.

‘No prices on anything,’ he pointed out. ‘Prolly free for all the fatties staying here.’

He joined Manni in kicking at the glass facades of the machines, adding, ‘Ironic that there’s no power and we can’t get to any of it!’

‘Oh yeah? We’ll bloody see about that,’ retorted Manni.

Then he disappeared briefly only to return, lunging forward with a long, heavy piece of timber that must have fallen from the ceiling. The first machine smashed easily, and Manni cleared the excess shards from its frame before delving in.

‘Okaaaay, what have we got? Let’s see here…’

He threw out a sealed pack to Arthur, who commented happily,

‘Ooh, rhubarb and custard boiled sweets. Used to love these as a kid.’

More came. Manni rooted through the machine and found multiple packs of candies, the majority of which looked to have stood the test of time and not perished. Also notable was the fact these packets sported designs more modern than the retro stylings of the resort itself. ‘All the hard stuff’s totally fine,’ he noted. ‘It’s only the chocolate that’s gone off.’

He found glacier mints, sugar canes, stick-of-rock bites, and other assorted sweet things before moving on to the next machine, then the next, then the next.

‘Bloody treasure trove, this is!’ Arthur beamed, gladly accepting more and more packs, as well as cans of soda. ‘It’ll all help to keep us going.’

‘Especially at the rate you’re tearing through the supplies,’ Dey half-smiled at him.

‘Well, I’m a big man,’ Sweet replied innocently. ‘I get hungry.’

Manni returned to his partner and patted his overtly rotund belly, then kissed his big cheek.

‘I know you do,’ he said, smiling fully now. ‘So, what do you say we take a good proper look around the rest of this place?’

‘Rightyo,’ said Sweet with sour spheres already in his mouth.

‘Okay, I’ll take this way down the hall and see what’s what, and do you wanna head up to the next floor and see what you can find? If this place really did belong to The Rookery, I expect-‘

‘No, it’s alright, lad, I’ll come with you,’ Sweet interrupted, popping another candy between his lips.

‘We can cover more ground if we split up,’ Dey shook off momentary confusion at his partner’s response. ‘You know, reconvene later, say 15 minutes from now at the base of the stairs?’

‘I think we should stick together,’ Arthur responded flatly. ‘You never know what’ll crop up. Could be all sorts around here.’

Manni’s brow creased once again.

‘Arthur, it’s fine,’ he stated. ‘No-one’s here. We’ll just keep an eye out for the local wildlife and-‘

‘I’ll come with you, I don’t mind.’

‘But I can search down here and you can start on the bedrooms,’ Dey said, beginning to move away down the hall. ‘That way we can-‘

‘Manni, don’t leave me!’

Arthur suddenly grabbed Manni’s forearm tightly.

Dey twisted and caught the stricken look in the older man’s eyes. A second passed and the look was gone.

Arthur then coughed unconvincingly, straightened himself up and made a fuss over adjusting his glasses.

‘I mean-,’ he started. ‘I didn’t mean… It’s just…’

‘No,’ Manni replied softly, ‘I get it. I do. I’m sorry, Arthur. It’s fine. Of course it’s fine. We can search it all together. It’s fine.’

He took Sweet’s hand and pulled him into a hug, squeezing his bulbous muscle into Arthur’s overabundant fat.

‘I’m sorry…,’ Sweet said quietly, then added no more, only hugging fiercely in that moment, feeling his partner’s huge bulky frame pressing into him.

After that, the two of them explored around the resort, finding (and pillaging) yet more vending machines, and discovering areas like utterly enormous kitchens and formerly glamorous restaurants (the tiki theme continued with an inactive plastic volcano centrepiece in one eatery). So much of this place was centred around food it was difficult not to reach the conclusion it had been anything other than a Rookery hideaway. The evidence was overwhelming.

Manni shot videos with his phone and made a point to keep Arthur by his side, often wrapping his strong hand around Sweet’s pink, podgy one. In truth they hadn’t much pored over what had happened to them during their last case. And Sweet’s sometimes taciturn exterior made it easy to forget that it hadn’t even been all that long ago that he’d been kidnapped and force fattened, very nearly becoming one of Kingfisher’s “pigs” for life.

Manni squeezed Arthur’s hand warmly, and brought it up for a kiss.

They began exploring the upper levels, having to traverse by stair since the lack of power had long plunged the lifts into obsolescence. One or two hallways had completely collapsed in on themselves, but eventually they found a row of seemingly intact rooms, and poked their noses into one.

‘Big king-sized beds,’ Sweet observed. ‘Perfect for fat, growing blokes.’

Manni opened a tiki-patterned closet, hoping to capture on video some evidence of Rookery handiwork - perhaps a 4XL shirt or 50 inch waist shorts - but came up empty.

‘I’d say so,’ he agreed. ‘They bring the lads in, make them feel pampered and what not, but I’d wager hard they never actually let them leave.’

Arthur looked around the resort room; it had obviously once been plush, perhaps even first class, before the curtains had been torn to shreds, the bedding rotten from a leak above. ‘Or maybe once they was here, they never wanted to leave.’

‘Which then begs the question,’ said Manni. ‘Where did everyone go?’

The pair wound their way around the rooms, searching for clues, finding more intermittent vending machines and thus adding to their stockpile of hard candies. At one point Sweet’s foot almost trod right through a stair on the upper levels, reminding them both of the structural instability of this place.

Then, once at the top floor, they came to the penthouse suite. It was massive, heavily themed with yet more plastic flowers and one wall painted with a South Pacific panorama. Better still, a truly vast tryptic of balcony windows looked out over the surrounding lush mountains.

‘Not a bad place to spend the night,’ Arthur said, patting down the huge bed and finding it mercifully intact. ‘Don’t think they’ll mind, do you?’

Manni laughed and unslung the backpack down onto a bedside cabinet with a faded pineapple painted onto its side. ‘Finders keepers.’

The day had grown long, the two former detectives having spent much of it either trekking or exploring. A spectacular sunset was beginning to burn across the sky. Here would be a fine place to stop and rest for the night.

Arthur waddled over to the backpack and opened another pack of scotch eggs, his stomach growling sonorously. To the expression Dey pulled, he immediately riposted, ‘They need using up! Unless you see a working fridge around here.’

Though concerned about their finite supplies, Manni couldn’t argue with that.

‘Besides,’ Arthur went on with full cheeks, ‘you know they’re me favourite.’

Manni laid a roid-swollen arm around the big man’s back, then rubbed gentle circles across Sweet’s tummy. ‘They are, that’s true.’

Arthur sat his enormous rear down onto the bed with a weary sigh, causing quite the dip in the mattress, settling in to make his way through the scotch eggs - there were a lot left.

Perhaps it was purely that Manni didn’t like food going to waste, or perhaps it was their relatively recent exposure to The Rookery with its penchant for all things feasts and feeding rubbing off on him, or… he wasn’t sure. But he picked out the next scotch egg and stood before Arthur, bringing it slowly to the big man’s face. He hoped this would be seen for the well-intentioned offering it was, and not as some trigger for Sweet’s memories of The Farm.

But Arthur cupped his fat hand around Manni’s, and wordlessly helped his partner guide the scotch egg to his mouth, chomping down in a big bite. They’d never done anything like this before. Instead of letting his hand rest, Dey again brought it back to Sweet’s mouth, and the older man again bit down.

A frisson was forming between the two of them. Arthur loved to eat, that much had long been true; it’d been clear way before The Rookery entered the picture. And Manni loved Arthur’s massive belly; it had always been larger than the average fat man’s and had only taken on more inches during Sweet’s time at The Farm. If he was being honest with himself, Dey found it hotter than ever; the warm stretching arc of it, all covered in hair, tight and firm across with some burgeoning softness underneath.

Manni proffered more scotch egg. ‘Not full yet, are you?’ he asked in a low voice, inwardly hoping Arthur had plenty of room left.

‘No, not at all,’ Sweet replied in almost a whisper, looking straight into his partner’s eyes and eating. His stomach was rising and falling with each breath.

‘You want more…?’ Dey asked, his musculature naturally bulging as he reached back into the pack. This was very much new territory for both men.

‘I want more…,’ Arthur breathed, and let Manni continue to push the food into his cheeks. He let out a pleasured moan in taking another mouthful of his favourite snack.

Dey next clambered onto the bed, dipping and creaking it further, until he was straddled over Sweet. He undid his trousers and let his generous erection press right into the big man’s bulbous gut, and fed more. While Arthur ate on, he fumbled at undoing his shorts, letting his own hard-on (fortified with plentiful fatpad) spring out. At this recently enlarged tonnage, he was finding it more of a struggle to reach his own member these days, but Arthur did his best. Pretty soon Manni was slow-humping Sweet’s gut, pressing his large rod firmly into the older man’s stretching skin while continuing to feed. He’d gotten 5 scotch eggs into Sweet so far, and was building up momentum.

Breadcrumbs all in his moustache and around his mouth, Arthur murmured, ‘Yeah… Oh yeah, lad… Oh God, yeah…’

Dey went on grinding and stuffing. ‘Look at this size of this thing,’ he panted, beating lightly at Arthur’s drum-like belly now coated liberally with perspiration.

Sweet was matching his partner’s gyrations, sweating and huffing in unbridled pleasure while his cheeks were plied fuller and fuller, his moans illegible.

Manni sped up, in the thrusts of his crotch against the big man’s ballooned stomach and in scooping up more scotch eggs and quite literally stuffing them into Arthur’s face, marvelling in the ongoing expansion of both cheeks and belly.

‘You love them, don’t you?’ he asked Arthur between breaths. ‘You want more…’

Unable to form words, so filled was he, Sweet could only nod with vehemence, grunting faster and faster and faster.

‘You want more and more and more…’ Dey huffed breathlessly.

And Arthur took it, still nodding, still chewing and swallowing, moaning louder and louder until:

‘Uuuuunnnghhh!’

He exploded up Manni’s roided torso, and in doing so caused Dey to reciprocate all over Arthur’s laboured belly, letting out a mighty groan.

Soaking up the tingling aftershocks, Manni let himself collapse against the upward curve of Arthur, holding on tight with both hugely muscled arms which Sweet then held, stroking the triceps up and down.

The pair laid in place, heaving out great breaths, locked in embrace for a while, saying nothing. Then Manni kissed the upper swell of Sweet’s gut and disengaged himself, seeking towels from the bathroom which proved rough to the touch but serviceable for their task. The sun outside was now all but a slither against the purple horizon.

‘Manni…,’ Arthur began in a shade above a whisper. He relinquished more exhausted breaths before continuing, ‘… I lo-‘

‘I need some air.’ Out of nowhere had come the stern, disappointed faces of Manni’s mother and father against his eyelids, there and gone in a second, but enough of a shock for him to interrupt his partner and move awkwardly away, toward where one of the huge windows led out onto the balcony. He couldn’t bare to look back, and prayed the balcony entrance was unlocked, which it was. Dey thrust himself outside, the evening’s cooling air on his face, and felt a fucking arsehole for what he’d just done. He knew exactly what Arthur was going to say.

Why did he cut across Sweet’s declaration and bolt out like that? Why wasn’t the ‘box’ of his parents’ great dissatisfaction closed as it usually was? It had sprung open - Why now, of all times? He’d gone from elation to wretched in a heartbeat. And all he could do was slump his huge powerlifter body over the balcony railing and gaze out at the stretch of mountains in the distance.

‘Fuck my life…,’ he muttered angrily to himself with a sigh. He’d really fucked that moment up, hadn’t he?

When Sweet’s heavy footsteps resounded behind, Manni screwed his eyes closed, wincing at whatever unholy awkwardness was about to descend.

But Arthur simply joined him, mute but still breathing quite heavily.

Manni wanted to curl up and die. Better that than to endure this heartbreaking silence. But he was just going to have to suck it up and take responsibility, get his head out of the sand.

‘Arthur, listen…,’ he forced the words out against their will. ‘I… I didn’t-‘

‘What’s that?’ Arthur’s brow lowered and he leaned forward, his bulk pressing into the railings.

‘Huh?’

‘Over there.’ Sweet inclined his head forward.

Dey scanned the now shadowy landscape and soon saw it. His jaw loosened involuntarily.

‘What the…,’

Lights. On the mountain. Somewhere near the crest.

‘What the fuck?’ Dey finished the sentence this time.

Bobbing up and down in a precession across the mountaintop, and the size of tacks from this distance, the lights flickered and guttered.

‘Torches,’ Arthur stated. ‘The flaming kind, looks like.’

Now that night had come, the yellow torchlight burned brilliantly in the darkness. There must have been dozens of them marching in a line across the hills.

Sweet, as was his way, adjusted his glasses once more and said,

‘What the fuck, indeed.’