Chapter Five. Go to Harper's Wood?

The clock radio sounded. A song by The Bee Gees was playing as dawn flooded through the slatted blinds. Don't ever let me find you gone, coz that would bring a tear to me... He stretched his limbs across the bed feeling safe and cosy. He looked up through the window at the silver breadth above, a pair of swallows were playing tag by an overhanging maple. He smiled to himself, what a dream. I'm never drinking so much again. He raised himself on an elbow and blinked at the carnage before him, it had been real. He stepped over a collapsed bookcase and edged past the the shards of broken glass littered about from a smashed ceiling lamp. He walked to the strange painting left in his apartment from the previous night and checking his shoulder for the unfamiliar hands of people who answered to names such as Nord or Jerry he peeled back the thin paper before him. He lifted it from corner to corner and found a note from Matt. When the cubs had been younger the other side had always been their name for their forest hideaway. Could it be possible that this message was telling him to go to Harper's Wood? He rolled back the painting to look untouched and headed for the shower.

He then hit the street, knowing that time was of the essence. If he hadn't been so dead tired yesterday he could have tackled that Nord character to the ground and taken him to the two Julias. They wouldn't have known the difference surely, one loopy fruit with a connection to a made-up Dan Brown organisation is surely as good as another? As he walked he felt eyes on him, and sure enough when he sent his gaze across the street a dark figure disappeared behind a pastel blue Vespa. What a chump, thought Blissful E. Bear.

"Hey!" Blissful shouted, running towards the crouching assailant, "Hey! Wait".

The man ran faster than Blissful would have expected but he still had the gait to reach him. But the man's strength was no match for a young bear whose sole dietary requirements had been met recently by Nasi Goreng noodles and Smith & Clyde lager from Aldi. The man turned Blissful around to face him and before uttering the words, you have disapointalised us my friend, we thought we could treasure you, he used two fingers in a sleeper hold and sent him unconscious.

JH