Chapter Eighteen

“Soooo, ” I slowly began, looking around. “What happens now?”

Yorick looked out at the collapsed crypt and scratched at his skull. Anj glanced back and forth between the suddenly-aged structures. Archie prodded thoughtfully at the tunnel, and Jeff picked up some of the dirt, cautiously sniffing at it.

Headcrow sat up, hugging his legs to his chest & peering out from under his knees.

“Can anyone think of anything we can do to find this new arrival?” He asked. “Seems like whoever they are, they’re long gone.”

“Is that normal?” Anj asked. “I can tell the thing where stuff gets old isn’t normal, but what about digging your own way out?”

“Not in these parts, no.” Yorick replied. “Maybe in some other places, but … Not here.”

He and Headcrow stared off in a direction roughly opposite the Mansion, giving the impression of thousand yard stares despite neither of them having eyes.

“I don’t know about anyone else,” Said Archie, pointing towards the Mansion. “But if we don’t have a plan, and we don’t know where they went, and we don’t have anything better to do, I could do with a nice meal and a few dozen drinks.”

—

We were halfway back to the Mansion when Jeff’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Which movie were were thinking of when you tried the umbrella thing?” He asked. “You said it worked in the movie, but I can’t think of which one.”

“I don’t remember a scene like that in Coco.” Archie mused.

“What’s a Coco?” Anj asked. “I meant the old one, with the musical bits and the terrible accents. And the bit where they all grab hands and fly out of a window? It’s an animated sequence, I think?”

Yorick and Headcrow watched politely as Jeff, Archie, and I looked thoughtful.

“The one with the terrible accents?” Ventured Jeff. “Is there a bunch of kids who need a nanny?”

“Aye, that’s the one! She flys down on an umbrella.” Anj gave a thumbs-up. “I figured that since I’m a skeleton version of her, it should still work.”

“A. Skeleton. Mary. Poppins.” Archie slowly said, then slumped. “And the animated flying bit? Was there a tiny fairy?”

Anj nodded enthusiastically.

“You’ve seen it then!” She said brightly.

Archie somehow had a thousand-yard stare going on in all eight eyes, and Jeff’s thoughtful look slowly shifted into one of incredulity. I stayed quiet, though I thought I had an idea of what was going on; I wanted to see who would explode first.

Yorick leaned over my shoulder and whispered in my ear.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m pretty sure that Anj has combined two movies.” I explained. “Neither of which are related to how she now looks.”

“So what are you waiting for?” Headcrow muttered.

“This might be a bad thing, but I want to see whether Jeff or Archie snaps first.” I replied. “And then I want to ask how it worked at all.”

—–

Yorick and Headcrow and I followed the trio through the hedge maze.

“How do you know Mary Poppins if you’ve never seen the movie?” Jeff demanded.

“Well, there’s that parody bit in The Simpsons, and I’ve seen the odd clip in memes making fun of the accents.”

“That kind of explains confusing it with Peter Pan.” Archie acknowledged. “Because of the animation.”

“But why Mary Poppins in the first place?” Jeff continued.

Anj gestured at her long dress, and popped open her parasol.

“Looks about right to me.”

She waved a skeletal hand around, showing off the decorations.

“Not clear on the painted flowers though; What’re those about?”

—–

Yorick and Headcrow and I had dropped back a bit as we crossed the lawn, mostly to get some distance from the bickering up ahead.

“All of us?” I asked Yorick, quietly.

He gave me a confused look and did his impossible eyebrow-raise thing.

“I was thinking about what you said.” I continued. “And you said the answer to the question of ‘who died and made her the boss’ was ‘all of us’.”

I must have been getting used to facial expressions on people without standard faces, because his wince didn’t strike me as odd.

“I probably shouldn’t have said that.” He replied. “It … It normally gets talked about a bit later.”

“No.” Headcrow agreed, raising a hand and prodding Yorick in the back of the skull. “You shouldn’t have.”