The Day I Found a Wormhole at the Bottom of the Garden

by Tom McLaughlin

  “Ah, yes … a Diplodocus,” Einstein said, joining Billy by the window. “No need to panic.”

  “Righto,” Billy said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not really sure what to say to that—”

  At that moment, the phone rang. Everyone stopped dead in their tracks, especially those who’d never heard a phone ring before.

  “WE’RE UNDER ATTACK! THE SAXONS ARE COMING!”

  Atticus bellowed, pulling out his sword as he ran into the living room.

  “No, we’re not! Someone is calling us! Can you stop being so violent. Now, where’s the phone? Where’s the phone?!” Billy panicked as he looked at the blank faces of the Roman soldiers.

  “Whot does it look like?” the Queen asked, pushing past the soldiers.

  “Black with buttons!” Billy said.

  “This?” Atticus asked, grabbing the TV remote and pushing all of the buttons.

  “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  Billy cried, but it was too late. Atticus had pressed the off button for the TV. With no Antiques Roadshow in the background, Nan began to stir.

  “Argh! If she wakes up, this is going to get worse and I can’t deal with worse!” Billy said as quietly as he could, finally finding the phone and clamping his hand over it to block out the ringing sound. He snatched the remote from Atticus and frantically pushed down on the buttons. “It’s not working! What do I do? WHAT DO I DO?”

  “Make the voice,” Victoria whispered to Billy.

  “What?” Billy whispered back.

  “You know, the voice of the man on the tee-vee? If you make his voice, then she won’t wake up,” she suggested.

  “OK … that’s a good idea … but you need to answer this phone,” Billy said.

  “Whot?” Victoria asked.

  “You need to pretend to be Nan so that I can be the TV man,” Billy said, quickly explaining it as best he could.

  “Whot does she sound like?!” Victoria asked.

  “An old woman, like you, but not as posh,” Billy said.

  “Well, that’s charming,” Victoria snapped as Nan’s eyes started to open.

  “JUST DO IT!”

  Billy said, pushing the button on the phone and handing it to Victoria. He quickly stepped in front of the TV and started to speak in the best accent he could to try and lull Nan back to sleep. “I’m looking at a very saggy piece that needs a few repairs—”

  “What?” Victoria hissed. “Well, I’m looking at a rogue who’s going to get a smack in the chops!”

  “I’m pretending to be the antiques expert! Now, speak into the phone!” Billy said before continuing. “This is worth forty-seven thousand pounds! Well done, I’d sell it right away and go and spend all the money on pizzas!” He looked over at Nan, who had gone back to sleep with a big grin on her face. Billy reached around the back of the TV and switched it back on.

  “Oh, I see! Terribly sorry, Billy,” Victoria said down the phone.

  “Hello? Mum?” Billy’s mum said from the other end of the line.

  “Yes, this is one.” Victoria shrugged.

  “Is everything OK? Your voice sounds different…”

  “Different, you say…” Victoria said, looking confused.

  “Yes, you sound like Dame Judi Dench from TV,” Mum replied.

  “It’s too posh!” Billy said. “Make your voice more common. You know, like you’re not royalty.”

  “Oh … sorry about that. I’ve just been having a Google,” Victoria said into the phone. Billy gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Oh, OK…” Mum replied. “How is Billy? He didn’t try and put that antiques programme on so that he could get up to mischief, did he?”

  “No! There’s definitely been no mischief here. Just some toast … and we’ve been looking at vacuum cleaners,” Victoria said, running out of things to say. “I also like whoopee cushions and magic boxes.”

  “Oh, right … that’s good, I suppose. Look, the weather’s pretty bad here. There’s been some thunder and lightning and apparently a bus caught fire too, so I think the traffic’s bad. We’re going to have dinner here and wait until it clears. Is that all right? Would you mind sorting out tea for you and Billy? There’s plenty of bread for toast.”

  “That’s fine. You take as long as you need,” Victoria said as Billy did some happy jumping with his thumbs up.

  “MAYBE DON’T COME BACK AT ALL! BYEEEEEE!”

  Victoria shouted and, deciding that this was the end of the conversation, handed the phone back to Billy.

  “What was that?!” Billy asked, looking at her furiously. “Don’t come back at all?!”

  “Excuse me, one is not used to talking on the telephone. I have a little man for that!” Victoria said. “You can’t expect one to make things up as one goes along! I’m the Queen, not…” She paused, trying to make something up. “You see, I told you. I don’t speak to people unless it’s been written down for me, so you can look at me all you like, but it won’t change a thing.”

  “Uh, Billy,” Einstein interrupted and pointed out of the window. “I think we’ve got more pressing things to deal with, don’t you?”

  “Oh yeah,” Billy said, remembering the dinosaur in the back garden. “And it looks like he’s brought a friend…”

  The Diplodocus’s head swayed as the creature growled and snarled at its new surroundings. Its neck was thick like a tree trunk, and almost as tall as the house. On top of its neck sat a tiny little head, snapping and yapping away, and on top of that sat something else.

  “WHAT LIGHT FROM YONDER GREAT BIG BLOOMIN’ HOLE BREAKS?”

  a voice cried out.

  Billy rubbed his eyes. “Is that…?”

  “Err…” Einstein added.

  “OMG! That means one’s most gobsmacked,” Victoria pointed out. “It’s him, Shakespeare! I love him. He’s so…”

  “Talented?” Billy suggested.

  “Clever?” Einstein put forward.

  “Yummy!” Victoria gushed.

  “Well, I didn’t expect that,” Billy said, raising his eyebrows at Einstein.

  “I’ve seen all of his plays! I used to have his portrait on my wall. That head, it’s so…”

  “Big?” Einstein said.

  “Bald?” Billy added.

  “Handsome…” the Queen purred.

  “Really?” Billy and Einstein both asked.

  “YES!” Victoria snapped.

  “Wow! Anyway, we should probably get him down,” Billy said, noticing that William Shakespeare was wobbling around uncomfortably on the top of the dinosaur’s head. “Are you OK up there?” Billy yelled.

  “No! Not really!” came a distant reply, as Shakespeare rode around the garden, thirty metres up in the air. “I’m having a really bad day. Firstly, I was stuck writing my play, then I lost my quill, and finally, I landed on this monster from yonder hole over there.”

  “Oh yes. One can see how that would really niggle,” Victoria said and turned to the others. “We have to save him. He’s very fine – I mean – a very fine playwright! We need to keep his spirits up. Oh, I know something that’ll cheer him up!”

  “No!” Billy snapped. “No more whoopee-ing!”

  “Spoilsport … so what are we going to do?” Victoria asked. “I think we need a plan. This sort of thing is likely to draw attention.”

  “The Queen makes a good point,” Einstein said. “I mean, I’m no expert, but people may notice a giant lizard in your garden.”

  “Well, you do see some strange sights in Clapham, but yes, you’re probably right,” Billy said.

  “That’s not the only problem,” Einstein joined in, scratching his head. “The wormhole must be getting more unstable. It’s sucking up people and creatures from different times and spitting them out in one go. We need to do something before it rips the universe apart!”

  “Right, I’ll put that on my to-do list.” Billy turned to face Shakespeare. “I’m going to try and help you get down, Mr Shakespeare. Now, sit up for a second … then maybe l
ie down…” Billy paused and looked over at his dog, who was eagerly following his instructions. “Oh, great, this is the time you start to do as you’re told?” he muttered before continuing. “OK, roll over … then slide down the dinosaur’s neck.” Billy glanced at the very confused dog. “Yeah, I thought that last one would throw you.”

  Suddenly, there was a thud as the world-famous playwright landed in a heap in front of everyone.

  “Ouch.” Einstein winced.

  Slowly, Shakespeare got up, shook the grass from his head and yelped in fright as Queen Victoria hugged him.

  “Madam … how do you do? Why are you all in such peculiar dress?” he asked, looking around in bewilderment.

  “It’s a long story,” Billy said. “But it started with me accidentally pulling Queen Victoria’s crown out of the ground. I thought I’d struck gold, but it turns out that all that glitters is not gold—”

  “Oh gosh, that’s quite good,” Shakespeare said.

  “Thanks…” Billy laughed. “Anyway, after that, lots of people started falling through a wormhole, which is like a portal through space and time, and you are now about five hundred years in the future. Here are a few other people from history: a Queen, some Roman soldiers and a very clever man who knows about science. We’re just trying to work out what to do next before the world is destroyed by a giant vacuum cleaner … got it?”

  Shakespeare looked at them blankly then promptly began sobbing. “Oh, I don’t care anyway! I hope the world is destroyed! I hate my life! I hate writing! I detest 40!”

  “WHAAAAAAAAT?!”

  Victoria, Einstein and Billy all yelled. Atticus and the Roman soldiers were less bothered about Shakespeare and more worried about the giant dinosaur that was trying to nibble the plumes on their helmets.

  “But you’re really good at writing. Really ace,” Billy said. “Listen, Mr Shakespeare, I understand that artistic types sometimes have these little moments – I know it’s part of the process – but do you think we could talk about your troubles later on, and in the meantime, see if we can save the world?”

  Shakespeare stuck out his lip and nodded slowly. Billy turned to Einstein. “I need your help, big guy. We all loved your vacuum cleaner talk, it was great, but now we need the biggie. How do we solve this? How do we send everyone home and stop the wormhole before we all die? Go, buddy, go!”

  “Err … do you have a star?” Einstein asked.

  “Nope…” Billy said after thinking for a second. “Righto, a bit disappointing. So I’m guessing that means the end of life as we know it? Who’s for putting the kettle on and cracking open the secret chocolate Mum and Dad hide for when I go to bed? I mean, it doesn’t matter now, does it?!” Billy took a deep breath. “What would a star do anyway?”

  “It has a huge mass … it’s so dense that if we put it in the hole, it would reverse the wormhole.”

  Billy stopped in his tracks. A smile spread across his face. “I know what to do!” he cried. “I know what to do!”

  ROOOOOOOOAR!

  The Diplodocus roared, dropping a tree in the middle of Billy’s lawn.

  9 p.m.

  “Say that again?” the policeman said, looking directly into the bus driver’s eyes.

  “I told you, a gang of them – probably aliens, but I couldn’t be certain – jumped aboard my bus, carrying weapons; laser weapons, like from the future…”

  “And then what? Did they try and steal the bus?”

  “Oh no, they just said they were scientists on their way to find a – what did they call it? – oh yes, a wormhole.”

  “A what now?”

  “A wormhole. It’s like one of those slides you get at the pool, except it doesn’t dump you out in the shallow end, but rather in a different place in time and history. I did some Googling.”

  “And they said that one of those is in … Clapham?”

  “Yep,” the bus driver answered.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Well, then there was a lot of hullabaloo.”

  “Hullabaloo?”

  “Yes, hullabaloo. It’s several stages away from mischief. There’s mischief, shenanigans, hullabaloo and then I think it’s Armageddon. Anyway, they were dressed in spacesuits, causing hullabaloo on my bus, when one of their laser weapons went off.” The driver paused and shook some soot from his hair. “The bus caught fire and the aliens all ran away, so I phoned you.”

  “Well, this is very strange. It sounds like there may be some sort of invasion from another dimension. Either that or there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this, but I’d rather not take any chances. As they used to say at police-training camp: if in doubt, lock ’em up, ask questions later. I think I may have to call for back-up. Maybe the Air Force can scramble a few helicopters and get to the bottom of this. Which way did the so-called scientists go?”

  “That way, towards that unholy menacing presence.”

  “Poundland?”

  “No, I mean the big purple skies and angry clouds.”

  “Oh, that would make more sense.” The policeman paused and dialled a number on his phone. “Oh, hello? Yes, is that the Air Force? Great … I don’t suppose you’ve got a couple of hours and half a dozen helicopters to spare, have you?”

  A van screeched to a halt by the burning bus and reporters with cameras and microphones jumped out. “Excuse me, officer, we’ve had a report of some sort of cosmic event. Can you give us a comment?”

  “We may be experiencing an invasion from another dimension, but I really can’t comment any further. All I can say is that the army are on standby to defend Planet Earth. And that probably, the best thing is to stay indoors and shut the windows.”

  Billy ran inside to the living room. He reached into Nan’s handbag and pulled out a piece of paper.

  “This is our answer to everything!” Billy said triumphantly. “What we have here, friends, Romans and monarchs, is the recipe for the densest material known to man. Let me introduce you to my nan’s rock cakes,” Billy said, reaching into the bag and pulling one out. “I’ve seen one of these knock a burglar clean out. It can blunt your teeth in seconds, and it weighs more than a star,” Billy said throwing one to Einstein, who nearly fell through the wall trying to catch it.

  “My goodness, how is there so much weight to what looks like a normal cake? This is not possible.”

  “I know, my nan’s got mad skills, hasn’t she?” Billy smiled. “So, we have the recipe. All we need to do is double, maybe quadruple the ingredients until we have a rock cake the size of a cannonball. Then we can simply drop it down the hole and…”

  “The cake will begin to expand,” Einstein said, his face lighting up. “The gravitational pull will be so huge that it will reduce the hole to a tiny trickle. It should reverse the process and stop everything flying out … thus saving the world.” Einstein clapped. “That, my boy, is brilliant.”

  “Great, but how will we get home again?” Atticus asked.

  “Well, imagine that time is like an elastic band – you can pull and stretch it, but it wants to snap back. If we all jump into the wormhole, we should, in essence, snap back to where we came from. Nothing will change. We will have no memory of this. It’ll be like we’ve never been away – we might just feel a little woozy, like when you stand up too quickly. At least that’s the theory anyway.”

  “Well, if it’s good enough for Einstein, then it’s good enough for me,” Billy said.

  Suddenly Shakespeare, the dog, began to bark at the window again. Billy looked out to see the Diplodocus squatting on the grass. “Do not do a big dino turd on my lawn!” he shouted out of the window. “Hold it until you get back to your own dimension! It’s a one-thousand-pound fine for dog fouling around here; how much do you think it’s going to be for a Diplodocus?” Billy shook his head and turned back to the dog. “Well done, Shakespeare. You really are a good boy.”

  “Thank you. I try my best, but it’s not easy,” Shakespeare said and bowed.
>
  “No, not you, the dog, you know … for alerting me to the dinosaur. This is getting confusing.”

  “Why is the dog called Shakespeare? It’s not a common name.”

  “Well, actually, he’s named after you!” Billy said, trying to cheer him up.

  “I’ve got a waterfall named after me,” Queen Victoria whispered in Shakespeare’s ear.

  “Why did you name the dog after me?”

  “Well, we were doing Shakespeare at school, and then we got a dog who basically sleeps and yawns a lot and your play—” Billy stopped, realizing where he was going with this.

  “My play what? Made you sleepy too?” Shakespeare said looking horrified.

  “No, I didn’t say that!”

  “You were going to, though! Do children find me … boring?”

  “Look, I think sometimes it’s hard to teach kids stuff that’s really old.”

  “Do they talk about us?” Atticus piped up.

  “Yes.”

  “Are we boring?”

  “Oh no. Everyone loves the Romans,” Billy said. “I mean…”

  “Oh, so people like the Romans, do they?” Shakespeare shouted.

  “Kids like gory stuff, you know … blood and guts. The Romans did a lot of that … but we don’t have time for this.”

  “That’s it! I’m giving up on writing; you’ve just convinced me. If all I can hope for is having a dog named after me, then what is the point? It’s no waterfall, is it?”

  “Look, please don’t do that. It’s really important that you keep writing. My mum loves you. She even took Dad to see a play of yours on their first date. You definitely get better.”

  “BETTER? BETTER?!”

  Shakespeare cried. “That’s it, I’m not going home. I don’t care if it messes with history. I’m staying here to find another job.”