10 The Unexpected Spot of Do-Gooding

The Unexpected Spot of Do-Gooding Whilst Bethany and Claudette were flying around the neighborhood, Ebenezer was looking at pictures of himself. Specifically, he was looking at pictures of himself with the beast. The first of these images was a portrait of Ebenezer and the beast at the Frost Fair, which had been held on the neighborhood's frozen lake during a particularly cruel winter.

Ebenezer was not much older than thirty, and the beast was still small enough to be transported around the place in a basket, with three carefully carved-out eyeholes. In the background, behind one of the ice- skating jesters, Ebenezer could make out the face of Nicholas Nickle the Second. He had been a horrid child who inherited his late father's penchant for making sticks of the excessively pointy variety. The next portrait showed Ebenezer and the beast pouring a chamber pot of pee-pee over the smug, bewigged head of Nicholas Nickle the Eighth. The one after that recalled the occasion, around the time of Nicholas Nickle the Thirteenth, when the beast had reluctantly agreed to waltz with Ebenezer to

save them both the bother of attending the neighborhood ball. There were portraits of items that the beast had vomited out over the centuries. Many of these had been sold in the sale, but there were some, like the rocket rain boots and the smooth-talking spatulas, that must have still been lurking in one of the house's many hidden spaces. The book was a real page-turner, and it could be read over and over again, because the memories changed every time Ebenezer went back to the beginning. He was so caught up in his own past that he didn't stop to think about what it all meant. But just as he was about to commence his fourth reading, he realized what the memory book was really showing him. It suggested

that the person Ebenezer missed most in the world was… the beast. "Oh no," said Ebenezer. Then, just to make his stance perfectly clear, he added, "Oh no, no, no!" He couldn't believe it was possible. It was one thing to think that his life ran a little smoother when he had a magical creature around, but it was something else to be actually missing the slobbery, murderous menace. Reluctantly, Ebenezer closed the book—knowing that he really shouldn't look at it anymore. He took it downstairs and hid it under the sofa in one of the sitting rooms because he wasn't ready to return it to the land of leopard-print waistcoats.

He tried distracting himself by going outside to deal with the beastly items that had been left on the lawn. When he opened the door, he found an extraordinarily old man squinting at the objects. "Can I help?" asked Ebenezer, in a way that really said Get off my lawn, strange old man! He said it again, louder, because he saw that the man's hearing aids were switched off. "Hmm?" said the old man. He was supporting himself with two walking sticks. "Oh, hello there. Can you help me?" "That's literally what I just asked," said Ebenezer testily. The memory book had left him in a thoroughly disagreeable mood. "What are you doing here?" The old man fiddled with his hearing aids. "I'm here for the yard sale," he said in a

ragged and jangly voice. "Dorris told me there were some wonderful things to be had." "Dorris? Who the heck is Dorris?" said Ebenezer. "The yard sale was yesterday. Done, gone—finito. We sold everything." The old man raised an eyebrow at the objects on the lawn. "You won't want any of those," said Ebenezer. "They've all been causing mischief." The old man's face fell, and Ebenezer felt a surge of pity. Then he had a sudden surge of inspiration, as he remembered Bethany suggesting that he should do a spot of voluwhating at the old people's home. It felt like an opportunity to do something similar had landed, quite literally, on his doorstep.