Shrinking Ralph Perfect

by Chris D'Lacey

  Jack’s eyes came even closer together. ‘Like him, don’t you?’ he said very coldly, as Knocker grizzled and tottered around the floor. With great comic timing, he stumbled forward and fell through the gaping hole in the boards. A small hill of dust puffed out of the gap.

  Penny saw it as a chance to escape Jack’s glare. ‘Oh dear. Poor Knocker. We’d better—’

  ‘Leave him,’ said Jack. He moved towards the table. ‘Boy wants to see the main attraction. Let’s show him.’ He whipped the blue sheet back over his shoulder.

  There, on the table, was the large, long fish tank; four walls of glass with an open top. Penny stooped down and peered through the glass. ‘Oh, a house. How… unusual.’

  ‘Miniville,’ said Jack. ‘Prize exhibit.’

  Ralph stepped forward for a closer look. But the house just swam in front of his eyes as his mind began to connect the name Miniville to all his darkest theories and fears.

  ‘Did you build it?’ asked Penny.

  ‘I’m the landlord,’ said Jack.

  That means he’s got lodgers, Ralph thought dizzily. And he knew he should have warned his mother what this meant. But his normally dependable twelve-year-old brain had been completely unhinged by a line from his favourite repeat TV show, a series called Lost in Space, in which a robot was often heard to cry ‘Danger!’ to a boy called Will Robinson.

  Danger, Ralph Perfect!

  Danger! Danger!

  Ralph was just too scared to speak.

  Penny knitted her eyebrows, worried by Jack Bilt’s overbearing smugness. ‘It looks so real. Why are you keeping it inside a fish tank?’

  ‘Because there’s no escape,’ said Jack.

  And that was the vital prod Ralph needed, to get his stuck tongue working again. ‘Mum,’ he panted, ‘the house is real. It’s the one that went missing on the Yorkshire Moors. He stole it. Just like he stole the machine that shrank it.’

  Penny shook her head and looked quizzically at Jack.

  ‘Boy’s right,’ he said. ‘Should have called him Sherlock. I’m a rogue. I’m a rascal. A rozzer’s dodger. They should lock me up, they should.’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Penny said soberly. Her accommodating smiles had all been put away. She wasn’t going to tolerate any more nonsense. When Jack didn’t answer, she took Ralph’s arm. ‘That’s it. We’re leaving. Come on, Ralph.’

  Jack stepped sideways and blocked her path. ‘Very neat. Both together. I could almost say perfect.’ He drew back his sleeve. The transgenerator pulsed.

  ‘Stand aside,’ said Penny.

  ‘I think not,’ said Jack. He turned the red pyramid on his wrist.

  Ralph felt as though his guts had been put into a bag, spin-dried and hit with a very large hammer. In a flash, the world disappeared to a point, like the last lick of ice cream in the bottom of a cone. There was a sudden rush of light, then darkness, then cold. He came to with a painful jolt, finding himself on a wooden floor that smelt of damp and long neglect. His mother was on her knees beside him.

  ‘I feel sick. What happened?’ She clutched at her stomach.

  Then a voice said, ‘No, not you as well.’

  Ralph and his mother looked over their shoulders. A tall figure in blue came hurrying towards them.

  It was the long-lost plumber, Tom Jenks.

  It’s a Small World

  Penny stood up slowly, crossing her arms like a mummified pharaoh. ‘Where are we?’ she whispered, in a voice filled with confusion and fear.

  Tom moved forward and held her by the shoulders. ‘You’re in Miniville,’ he said, as calmly as he could. ‘You’re in the parlour at the front of the house Jack’s…renovating.’

  Penny backed away, shaking her head. She looked around at the bare grey walls; at the threadbare rug, too ditched and dirty to reveal any pattern; at the broken pelmets above the high stately windows, once sturdy enough to take four or five metres of heavy drapes; at the huge stone fireplace, sooted and dead; at the ceiling rose and its unlit chandelier; and then again at Tom: sympathetic, kind, but utterly helpless.

  ‘It is me,’ he whispered, ‘underneath all this.’ He ran his hands around twenty days of stubble. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been miniaturised, just like the rest of us.’

  Penny lurched forward, trying not to vomit.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Tom said, not letting her fall. ‘Breathe slowly and deeply. The dizziness soon passes.’

  ‘Ralph?’ she gasped, struggling to look for him.

  ‘I’m here, Mum,’ he said. He was over by a tall bay window, looking out. Beyond its broken panes of glass, through the wall of the ‘aquarium’ in which the house sat, he could see Jack’s monstrous, gloating face, distorted like a curved reflection in a door knob. In a rolling thunder that shook the light fittings, the house shuddered and rocked to the builder’s laughter.

  He had them.

  Ralph and Penny.

  Miniones.

  ‘Let us out!’ cried Ralph. He beat a loose pane, causing it to crash into jags at his feet.

  His mother squealed and covered her ears.

  ‘It’s no good, Ralph,’ said Tom, calming Penny again. ‘You’re too small; he can’t hear you. Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you upset.’

  ‘But we can escape. I can climb through this window.’

  ‘Yes, and you can walk out of the front door any time you like. But you won’t get over the walls of the tank. They’re too high and too smooth. Trust me, we’ve tried.’

  ‘We?’ Ralph said. The sound of hurrying feet made him turn towards the door. Three more mini-people burst into the parlour: a middle-aged man with thick, black glasses and a ginger beard, wearing a pale-brown carpenter’s apron; a much younger, spiky-haired fellow in tracksuit bottoms and a plaster-splattered sweatshirt; and behind them, catching up fast…Kyle Salter!

  ‘You,’ Kyle spat.

  ‘You,’ Ralph echoed. He sounded flippant, but he didn’t mean to be. In truth, he was dreadfully scared. He’d suspected all along that Kyle’s disappearance was connected with Jack. And here was the living proof – in miniature. All the things he’d imagined were coming true. It was a horrible, dark, unsettling feeling.

  ‘You caused this, didn’t you?’ Kyle said, and charged towards Ralph as if he, and he alone, were responsible for their entire predicament.

  ‘Hey,’ Tom shouted, catching Kyle’s arm and spinning him off-balance. ‘That’s enough of that. We’re all in this together. You know the rules. No in-fighting.’

  ‘He’s a nerd,’ Kyle said. ‘I knew he’d turn up.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a small world, Kyle. Now behave.’ Tom pushed him back towards the grim-faced carpenter, who spoke in a softened Yorkshire accent.

  ‘We heard t’glass breaking. Wondered what were up?’

  ‘New arrivals,’ said Tom.

  The carpenter tugged his beard. ‘They’ll not be labourers, surely?’

  ‘Please,’ implored Penny, fingers fluttering against her temples, ‘will someone explain to me what is going on?’

  Tom guided her away from the window, away from the cartoon figure of Jack. The builder was watching through a magnifying glass. A magnifying glass. Ralph kicked himself, remembering how he’d seen it sitting by the fish tank. All the clues were there, all along.

  ‘Come upstairs,’ Tom said quietly to Penny. ‘It’s warmer. There’s food. We’ll explain the whole story, when you’ve met the others.’

  ‘How many people has he captured?’ gulped Ralph.

  ‘Thirteen, with you two,’ the plasterer said, just as a dreadful moaning sound came floating through the air like a fire alarm siren.

  ‘Duck!’ Tom shouted, forcing Penny down.

  The carpenter quickly grabbed hold of Ralph’s collar and almost dragged him into the fireplace. A millisecond later, a small section of metal piping flew across the room and smashed into the wall behind Ralph’s head, making a clank that rang throughout the house.

  ‘Corre
ction: fourteen,’ the plasterer said.

  Ralph looked in the direction from which the piping had come. There was no one there.

  ‘That were Miriam,’ said the carpenter.

  ‘Our ghost,’ said Kyle.

  Ralph shuddered, remembering the house was haunted. ‘M-Miriam?’ he said.

  Tom nodded, tight-lipped. ‘Another minor complication. Watch out for her. She likes to throw things about. She’s what you might call a ‘restless spirit’.’

  With that, he led them out of the parlour through a bleak, grey hall and onto the sweep of a winding staircase. At the foot of the stairs, a dumpy little man in grubby, white overalls was staring doggedly up at the wall.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Champion,’ said the man, watching with pride as a strip of paper peeled neatly off the wall and hung in place like a scroll of butter. ‘Had to water the paste mix down a touch. Cracked it now, though. Breath of wind touches the seam, it peels.’

  ‘Well done,’ said Tom, giving him a pat.

  Well done? thought Ralph. He’d never seen such a useless decorator; the bloke couldn’t make a postage stamp stick.

  He was about to say something about it when Tom clamped a hand against his shoulder and said, ‘Careful where you’re putting your feet.’ He diverted Ralph from a jagged hole in a loosely-tacked step. Puzzled, Ralph altered course. The stairs were terrible, worse than the wallpaper. There were dents and holes and cracks all over. Insects were boring into the handrail. Every step squeaked or dipped or groaned. Ralph stood on one board that creaked so much he thought his knee joints had prised apart. This was weird. Peeling paper. Creaking boards. He looked at the tools on the carpenter’s belt and saw hammers and a saw and a bag of old nails. He couldn’t help but ask, ‘You’re a carpenter, aren’t you? Can’t you make the stairs a bit safer?’

  A red flush grew under the ginger beard. ‘Neville Gibbons,’ said the man, shaking Ralph’s hand. ‘Thirty-seven years’ experience in wood. Never thought I’d have to do a job like this.’ He dug a dagger-shaped splinter out of a step. ‘I’m not s’posed to improve t’stairs, lad. I’m s’posed to make ’em wonky as jelly. Just like Tom makes t’plumbing buggle, and Wally here – our plasterer and electrician – makes all t’lighting flicker. Sam, who you just saw larruping paste, has to make sure t’paper only half sticks agen’ the walls.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Ralph, as they stepped onto a landing about as straight as a pasta twist. Feeling giddy, he grabbed for the banister. It broke in his hands, sending him windmilling towards the stairwell.

  Once again, his shirt collar acted as his saviour. Only this time, his rescuer was Kyle Salter. ‘You can’t trust nothing in Miniville,’ said Kyle. ‘Everything here is topsy-turvy, rearranged, just like your face is gonna be when we get out of here.’ He glowered at Tom, then pulled Ralph to safety.

  ‘We’ll explain when you’re settled,’ Tom said, relieved. ‘Kyle’s right, though. You have to be careful here. The place is ramshackle, falling apart. Nothing is quite what it seems. Come on.’

  Again he led them on, down a maze of corridors that dipped first one way, then the other. To either side, they passed rooms with little or no furnishings: a broken chair here, a leaning wardrobe there. In one room stood an old Victorian bath, with a tap that appeared to be dripping blood. Ralph was relieved to see another decorator pop up behind it, wielding a brush and a tin of red paint. What was going on here? He caught up with Tom and was about to pose the question when he heard a spooky rattle of chains. He stopped with a jolt. Tom and the others, too.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Penny, lifting her gaze.

  The rattle came again, followed by the transiting thud of feet across a ceiling that barely seemed able to support them. Then a wail broke out and a man’s voice cried: ‘Melt the heater!’

  Or something like it. That was the best fit Ralph could manage. The voice was far away and woefully distressed. ‘Is that another g-ghost?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re not sure,’ said Tom, drawing them further down the corridor, until they paused beside a rounded wall. In the centre of the wall was a heavy wooden door. It was smaller than average and arched at its peak. Arm-width bands of rusting metal, each with an iron stud at their centre, criss-crossed over its four main panels. Ralph took it as a sign that he shouldn’t enter and was quietly relieved when Tom said, ‘It’s locked. We don’t have a key. It leads to the tower room, we think. At night, from outside, we can see a candle burning. So there’s definitely someone – or something – in there. Mrs Spink, one of the people you’ll meet in a minute, thinks it might be Miriam’s ‘partner’. She has what she calls ‘psychic intuitions’.’

  Penny shuddered. The movement kept a small amount of colour in her face.

  ‘I reckon it’s a madman,’ Kyle muttered, narrowing his eyes as the manic screech of a madman’s laughter seeped through the door and jangled their bones.

  ‘Pelt the preacher!’ the crazed voice moaned.

  Or something close that rhymed with that. Ralph couldn’t guess and he didn’t want to think. He didn’t like this place. If his guts weren’t happily twisting with terror, his brain was kicking his stomach into touch. He slumped against the far wall, dizzy with fright, suffering the instantaneous nausea that only a certain kind of dread can bring: the fear of the imagined, the nameless unknown. Darkness swept over him like a cloak. Within five seconds, the surge of panic had become too much, and before Tom could steady him, he’d completely blacked out.

  About Miniville

  When he came to, he was lying on a mattress underneath a pair of rough cotton sheets. At least, that’s what it felt like at first. A quick dig revealed that the ‘sheets’ were actually tissue paper and the ‘mattress’ was one of the sponge-backed scouring pads Jack had cadged out of Penny’s kitchen cupboards, both shrunk down to a size appropriate for mini-people to sleep on. Looking round, Ralph could see lots of other mini ‘beds’, laid out like graves around the walls of the room. It reminded him of scout camp – the horror film version. Welcome to Miniville, Master Perfect.

  He was in a high-ceilinged, rectangular room. Directly above him, a broken chandelier hung down at an angle from a plaster rose. It was cold and the air was ugly with damp. The tall balcony windows were closed, but a draught from a broken pane was clashing with the flames of a small log fire, burning smokily in the large Gothic fireplace. Several miniones were hunkering in front of it, including Tom, Neville and Penny. Ralph sat upright, preparing to call to them, when a younger figure stepped in front of him.

  ‘Fancy a bite to eat, Rafe?’ It was Kyle Salter. He broke what looked like the shell of a candy sweet and skimmed it into the middle of Ralph’s chest. ‘Get used to it, old bean. Menu’s kind of limited.’

  Ralph let it bounce and refused to pick it up. He hated being picked on, and he hated it even more when people made fun of any part of his name. The first day he’d met young Kyle Howard Salter, the bully had said, ‘Your name’s Perfect? Well get you, snooty.’ And that was bad enough. But when Kyle had then found out that ‘Rafe’ (pronounced to rhyme with ‘waif’) was a trendy contraction of ‘Ralph’, he’d teased and jeered and never stopped saying it. Ralph could have happily put a fist in Kyle’s mouth. But where would that have got him? In hospital, not Miniville.

  ‘Mum,’ he shouted.

  Penny hurried over. ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’ She kissed his head, loudly.

  ‘Pathetic,’ Kyle muttered, and walked away laughing.

  Ralph stood up, candy shell breaking underfoot. As it happened, he did feel dreadfully hungry and was about to ask his mum if there was anything to eat when he saw, in one corner, what he thought at first was a stack of small gas cylinders. They were multicoloured and ranging in size from torpedo-shaped to large round footballs. It was only when Kyle took a stick to one and cracked off a lump and started to eat it that Ralph twigged what the objects really were: not cylinders, but sugar beads – from Mum’s lo
aned tub of hundreds and thousands.

  Food for the fishes. It made him want to yak.

  ‘Everyone,’ said Tom, calling for attention. ‘This is Ralph, Penny’s son. They came from next door.’

  Ralph shuddered and suddenly felt weak behind his knees. He didn’t like the tense that Tom had used: came from next door. Were they destined to stay here in Miniville for ever?

  People muttered their ‘hellos’ or offered their sympathies. Most were workmen of one kind or another. As well as Tom, Neville and Wally – plumber, carpenter, electrician – there was a stocky Irish roofer called Spud O’Hare; a green-wellied gardener called Mrs Spink, who for some reason stood twice as tall and twice as skinny as the rest of the captives; and a well-spoken architect named Rodney Coiffure. And beside the fire, looking as if she’d cried all of Cinderella’s tears, was a ragged, grim-faced Jemima Culvery, the only girl in the Salter gang. She scowled at Ralph, then returned her stare to the crackling fire, as if she’d like to be the next log on it.

  Tom gave Ralph a drink of water in a can. ‘No mugs,’ he explained. ‘We have to make do with what we can find and what Jack chooses to send our way. It’s a pretty miserable existence, I’m afraid.’ He crouched in front of Penny, who was holding Ralph’s hand. ‘We’ve got lighting and some running water; Jack miniaturised in a generator and pump, but they’re for the house use, not for us. In the room next door there’s an old, cracked sink I plumbed into the system. You can wash in it but I wouldn’t advise drinking from the taps; Jack made me fur them up with algae.’

  Ralph grimaced and pulled his mouth back from his can. ‘Why is everything so disgusting?’

  ‘I’ll explain in a minute,’ Tom replied. ‘The water you’re drinking is clean, we think. There’s a barrel over there in the corner by the door. Two tins per day, no more. That’s the rule. Fresh water is precious here.’

  ‘How do you get it?’ asked Penny.

  ‘You’ll see,’ Kyle sniffed.