This one was also female, although the distinction was even more meaningless than it had been with Mell. She was, effortlessly, the most disturbing Creepy so far – and considering Mister C of 9, that was really saying something.

She was significantly taller than Winona, who was the tallest of the six of us. And she barely even looked human. She was more like an abstract impression of a human, a faded copy of a copy of a copy that had stretched and warped in the reprinting process. If someone had been given a not-very-flattering description of what a human looked like, and had then done their best to make a sculpture approximating the shape, but had nothing to work with but soft white putty … that’s what she looked like. Gaunt, bleached, angular-yet-boneless, her hair similar to Mell’s pallid dreadlocks but even thicker and wilder, like a nest of drooping spikes atop her head and down her neck. Her face and hands were constantly moving, but not like muscle tics – it was more like … like the invisible sculptor was still tweaking and squishing them into the right shape, over and over again, the changes never quite visible as they occurred but subconsciously, disturbingly happening anyway.

Her mouth was the wrong size and shape, but this too was difficult to pinpoint. The outside of it was relatively normal, but the teeth inside were too long to fit, even though they evidently did. Her eyes were similar, like holes cut in a papier-mâché mask over the top of something cold and ice-blue and perfectly, consummately insane. Her hands were far more easy to quantify. They were nailless, knuckleless, tapered and pale like tree roots, or the tentacles of some deep-sea creature. She was wearing a weird sort of grey-white toga thing, that looked ancient and mildewy. And one of her hands was holding an axe.

When nobody else seemed to have the wherewithal to speak, I pointed at the axe. “Is that Bob?” I asked.

“No,” Creepy said, and gestured without looking away from the new arrival. Sure enough, Bob was lying on the kitchen counter.

“Maybe it’s an alternate-universe Bob?” I suggested.

“It was resting against the wall here,” the odd creature said, and pointed a long, pale, disgusting finger. “Next to the air conditioning vent. It … seemed prudent to arm myself.”

“Is the axe really the important thing here?” Winona asked.

“I think so,” Creepy said. “Now we have two Bobs.”

“And five Creepies,” I added.

“Yes. But two Bobs.”

I shook my head, and stepped forward. “Hi,” I said. “Just so you know, we didn’t do it but there’s a good chance you’ve been brought here from an alternate universe of some kind.”

“Maybe one that wasn’t quite finished,” Mister C of 9 added.

“Like maybe two-thirds done,” Creepy agreed.

“But then, is there any other sort of universe?” Winona philosophised.

“Um, what’s your name?” I asked. “I’m Hatboy, this is Creepy … and Mister C of 9, Xathrabian – uh, Winona – and Mell,” I pointed at each in turn, then double-took at Mell. She was staring at the newcomer in awe and horror, and it occurred to me that she might be from a universe a little less accustomed to weirdness than the rest of us. Either that, or she was having serious doubts as to whether or not she’d actually escaped from Perky Weather. “Mell?”

Mell didn’t respond, but the new arrival nodded slowly.

“I am the Drake,” she said.

And Mell, not in possession of an overabundance of shit to begin with, lost what little she had left.