The Deadly 7

by Garth Jennings

  “Yessss!” cried Uncle Pogo as if Nelson had just scored a goal in the World Cup. “Now tape it up with a few short pieces first. It should tear easily but you may need to bite it.”

  The two ends of the broken pipe were now only a couple of centimeters apart and ready to be joined again, but the vile water was hissing out of the small gap between the pipes right into Nelson’s face.

  Nelson turned around and spat to get the water out of his mouth and tore a length of tape from the roll.

  Just as he was reaching up to tape it closed, the entire pipe dropped back down and shot him with a face full of water. Off balance and unprepared, Nelson fell and landed flat on his back on the table. If this had been a normal table he would have sat straight back up, but what Nelson and Uncle Pogo didn’t know was that, hidden under the sheet, the table was covered in hundreds of tiny metal spikes. Like a bed of nails, they pierced Nelson’s poncho and stuck right into his skin.

  “Nelson! You all right?” shouted Uncle Pogo. But Nelson just lay there, not moving or making a sound.

  “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no,” panted Uncle Pogo, his excitement now replaced with complete panic. From Uncle Pogo’s point of view, Nelson was in a very bad way, but from Nelson’s point of view things could not be better.

  * * *

  You would have thought that landing on a bed of spikes would be extremely painful, but all Nelson felt right now was bliss. In fact it felt as if his body was melting like butter in a frying pan. The terrible smell in the room had left his nostrils and his nose was filled with the scent of the rose soap they kept in the downstairs bathroom at home. As his eyes closed he was looking up at trees, and sunshine was peeping through the green leaves. It was clear to Nelson where he was now—not in St. Paul’s Cathedral but in his backyard on a perfect summer’s afternoon. A memory brought back to life so completely that he was reliving it with every part of his body. He was sitting on a stool. Yes, he remembered it all now. Celeste was cutting his hair. Celeste. She wasn’t missing at all. She was right there, standing in the yard with a comb clenched between her teeth and a pair of scissors snipping away at his bangs. Charles from next door sat on the wall watching them like a pigeon. Celeste’s hands smelled of the rose soap. She leaned forward. “Close your eyes,” she said, and for a moment all Nelson could feel was his sister blowing the hair off his face. When he opened his eyes again, he was looking straight at her pendant. The pendant she always wore. The pendant that had belonged to her mother. The pendant that was supposed to bring good luck. The pendant she had given to him when she left—

  And all at once the dream ended and Nelson screamed the most terrible scream.

  Uncle Pogo was tearing at the wall and trying to squeeze his body through the gap. “Nelson! Nelson! Get up!” he cried, but Nelson could not move. He felt as if his body was gone and all he had left were his eyes. They were wide with fear and bewilderment. Even his breathing had stopped and he could hear a high-pitched whistle, like several kettles reaching boiling point. Nelson didn’t know this, but the sound was coming from beneath the table, where there were seven copper test tubes held in a row by an iron rod. The copper had turned green after hundreds of years of neglect and each test tube fizzed and steamed and frothed as if someone was pouring invisible hot fat into them. The whistling, screaming sound got louder and louder as the test tubes shook and spat and sent steam rushing upward. The whole table rattled as if it was furious. It was like an end-of-the-world-style earthquake and everything was screaming and there was steam and heat and pain and …

  It was over. Completely over, as if it had never happened. Nelson sat bolt upright and gasped as if he had been holding his breath all this time.

  “Nelson!” cried Uncle Pogo.

  Nelson rolled off the table and stood on shaky legs. “I’m okay,” he mumbled, and with that he passed out and fell to the floor with an almighty splash.

  Luckily Nelson had fallen close enough to the gap in the wall for Uncle Pogo to reach with his right arm and drag him through.

  He woke briefly to find himself being carried over his uncle’s shoulder in a fireman lift as they were bounding down some stairs. The next time his eyes opened he was lying on his back in the orange tent and being tucked under blankets. Uncle Pogo was looking down at him with real concern in his eyes.

  “I’m totally okay,” said Nelson weakly.

  “I’m such an idiot. I should never have asked you to do that. I’m so sorry. I’d take you home, but I think you’re better off resting up here for a bit. You won’t tell your folks about this, will you?” said Uncle Pogo, half joking but with a hint of real desperation.

  Nelson nodded. And smiled. Once again he felt all his sadness and worry and fear leave his body, as if he was sinking back into that happy feeling, like a great warm bath.

  “I feel great, just tired…” He yawned and another dream, this time of eating lasagna, Minty at his feet, washed over him.

  * * *

  The storm had passed. The sky was black and the puddles were great inky mirrors reflecting the orange lamplight. Uncle Pogo had already been on the phone to the caretakers and his contact at the Museum of London, who were coming as quickly as they could. Pogo was well aware that not only had he found the source of the leak, he had also stumbled across something special. A hidden chamber. This was bound to be of interest, even if it was rather smelly and gloomy looking.

  As Pogo gathered the tools he would need to repair the lead pipes more permanently, something truly extraordinary was happening above …

  * * *

  Back in the filthy hidden chamber, beneath the bed of nails, the seven green copper vials appeared to be trembling in their metal stand. When Nelson fell on the table he had switched on a machine that had lain dormant for hundreds of years, and now, like eggs about to hatch, these vials contained something that was alive and growing. Something that wanted to get out. And each one was making a very distinct noise. Awful gurgling sounds came from one of the tubes. From another, a noise like popcorn being made. Together it was a strange chorus of hissing and belching and growling and moaning, and it reached such a crescendo that the test tubes began to topple and fall from the iron holder. The contents of each vial floated out into the filthy water on the chamber floor, like disgusting croutons in a horrible soup.

  The strangest things you’ve ever seen. A tiny eyeball, alive, blinking, and swelling in size. A tongue rolling and stretching like a slug in salt, a bird-sized claw flexing and scraping against the stone, a tentacle like those of an octopus, which wrapped itself around a squashy green ball but quickly let go when the ball erupted in spikes like a cactus. A scarlet crescent-shaped object began to peel itself like a banana to reveal a black horn underneath, while a little purple sponge blossomed with thick fur and released a cloud of purple ink into the water. Though these strange and ugly and noisy little things looked and behaved completely differently from each other, they all had one thing in common: they were growing very, very quickly indeed.

  PROFESSOR DOODY AND THE VANISHING TOAST

  Nelson’s eyes snapped open. Something was moving outside his tent. A hurried sort of shuffling against the stone floor. It wasn’t the shuffling that alarmed Nelson; it was the fact that it had stopped so suddenly and he had heard a faint but urgent whisper. It was silent again. Worryingly silent. Nelson blinked quickly, his eyelids the only part of him that was awake right now. His body was way behind. He felt as if he had been dropped from a great height and landed with a splat on the air mattress. The right side of his face was smooshed into the pillow with such force that his mouth was forced wide open and his jaw was all wonky and drooling like a bulldog about to be fed. There it was again. Shuffling, this time even closer to his tent. The paraffin lamps threw just enough light onto his tent to cast shadows of the pillars, but some of those shadows were on the move. Odd little shapes moving too quickly to be identified.

  Nelson took a deep breath and was about to call out when his tent suddenly shook
and a snakelike shape slid across the top of it. Nelson’s eyes widened in fear. Whatever it was, it was extremely long and very slithery. If this was a snake, it was long enough to be the kind that could eat a man whole and heavy enough to make the top of the tent bulge down toward Nelson’s face. The end of “the thing” whipped against the top of the tent as it dropped to the crypt floor with a thud, leaving the whole tent quivering with relief like orange Jell-O. “Get up,” Nelson urged his body, but his body was having none of it. For the first time ever Nelson understood why people say, “I slept like a log,” and unfortunately for him, his body was still very much in log-mode. There it was again. Frantic indiscernible whispers, shuffling feet, and the scrape of something large snaking its way all around Nelson’s tent. Fear made his heart pound faster. Nelson wanted to call out to his uncle, but all he managed to utter from his dry throat was the first syllable: “Unk!” Big mistake. Whatever had been slithering and whispering clearly heard Nelson’s weak little cry, and it stopped. For a moment there was complete silence. Then the tent twitched, and from the corner of his left eye Nelson could see the entrance zipper starting to move. Now he really wished he hadn’t called out. He should have just kept quiet and hoped it would go away. Whatever the thing was, it knew he was here and it wanted to get inside the tent! The zipper rose slowly at first and then stopped abruptly. There was a low growl and the tent shook so violently that Nelson thought his heart might explode with fear. The growling became louder and louder as the tent shook and shook and shook and suddenly the tent burst open.

  “Graaaaaar—Ruddy zipper!” said the enormous face of Uncle Pogo, leaning in through the tent flaps. Nelson felt his fear burst like a dam and he was suddenly flooded with relief. The log-mode his body had been in instantly lifted and he was able to roll onto his back. “Didn’t wake you up, did I?” said Uncle Pogo.

  “I thought it was…” croaked Nelson, but he decided not to finish his sentence. The idea of giant snakes and strange creatures surrounding his tent had quickly switched from terrifyingly real to utterly ridiculous.

  “I’m just packing up. Fancy some brekkie?” asked Uncle Pogo with a jollity that indicated he expected only a positive answer. Nelson sat up and pushed his palms into his eye sockets for a good old rub while he contemplated this question. “I don’t really like Scotch eggs, Uncle Pogo.” He yawned apologetically.

  “Just as well.” Pogo chuckled. “I ate yours last night. How about some toast?”

  Toast. Even the sound of the word was delicious. Nelson’s stomach sent a very clear message straight to his brain, and the message was “Give me toast!”

  “I’d love some,” said Nelson, and his uncle’s enormous head ducked back out of the tent. Nelson arched his back and stretched his arms out in front of him as far as they could go, turning his palms up as if he was trying to stop something coming toward him. It felt so good to stretch. If he had been a cat he would certainly be purring right now. Nelson had never felt so happy to be awake. That really had been a mega-sleep. He knew he’d had crazy dreams—he could still see the last few fragments of them in his head—but as soon as he tried to recall them in any detail they vanished. It didn’t matter; those dreams had somehow left him feeling good. He patted his chest and felt the unmistakable bump of Celeste’s pendant.

  Just outside his tent, the toast was waiting for Nelson in a silver foil parcel. Upon unwrapping it, Nelson found the bread had clearly been toasted and buttered days ago, as it was now as cold and hard as a roof tile. Nelson sighed and decided it would be best if he left it on the floor and pretended not to have noticed it.

  Uncle Pogo had packed up just about everything. Rolls of plastic were stacked next to his boxy homemade electronics equipment, and the elastic ropes that had tethered the tents were lying in a pile. Those must be the snakes, thought Nelson. What a silly mistake to have made. The shadows and shuffling he had heard must have been Uncle Pogo trying to pack up without waking him. Obviously.

  “Pogo!” called out a voice from across the crypt. Nelson turned to see a short man, not much taller than he was, striding toward them. He wore an enormous knitted sweater that started under his chin in a turtleneck and went all the way down to his thighs. It was striped with every color you could think of and hung loosely over a pair of tight, ripped black jeans and clompy army boots that had been painted with odd little doodles like skulls and spirals. His green-tinted hair was probably about normal length but had been pushed up into the kind of Mohawk you can make yourself with shampoo when you’re having a bath, and it was clearly a while since he had dyed it because only the tips were green. “Over here, Doody!” shouted Pogo, and the man waved back without breaking his stride. It was Nelson he met first.

  “Eh, are you Pogo’s nephew?” he said, with a West Country accent and a cheeky grin full of wonky teeth.

  “Uh-huh,” was all Nelson could muster in reply.

  “What’s your name then?”

  “Nelson.”

  “I’m Professor John Doodson, but everyone apart from my nan calls me Doody,” he said, shaking Nelson firmly by the hand.

  “Okay, Doody,” replied Nelson, although it felt very odd to call someone by their nickname when you’d only just met them.

  “I’m from the Museum of London and I tell yer, Nelson, you’re gonna be well famous, mate,” said Doody, letting go of his hand and softly punching his shoulder, but before Nelson had time to ask why he was going to be famous, his uncle bellowed from across the crypt. “Doody! Over here!”

  * * *

  Nelson always imagined professors to look like, well, professors: long white lab coat, glasses perched on the end of a thin nose, and really hairy eyebrows. He never imagined a professor could look as colorful as Doody, but after five minutes of listening to him talk about the history of the building and the significance of the room they had discovered last night, there was no doubt Doody was as smart as a fox and didn’t just know everything about the history of London, he loved it too.

  “He was on a roll, that Christopher Wren. There he was, in the middle of building this massive cathedral, and still he’s got a million ideas buzzin’ around in his head like bees, and I reckon this room you found was his little secret place where he could test all his ideas out,” said Doody, helping Pogo to roll up his cables. “There’s stuff in there, under those sheets, that I’ve never seen before. Amazing-looking things, but I’ve got absolutely no idea what they do. I’m hoping old Mr. Wren wrote down what he was doing in some book or something, ’cause otherwise we’re gonna be playing the weirdest guessing game ever. Although, chances of anything still being readable after three hundred years in that room is pretty unlikely.” Doody’s phone rang with the fastest techno you have ever heard, and for a few beats he danced to the music before answering the call. “Y’allo, Doody speaking,” he said, and walked off to a corner of the crypt.

  “You know who he is?” asked Pogo, with a nod of his head toward Doody.

  “He said he was a professor at the Museum of London,” replied Nelson.

  “No, before all of that. Blimey, I suppose you’re too young to remember. Well, Doody was not always a professor. Back in the nineties he was in that techno band Messiaz. They were massive. You must have heard ‘Peace Out’?” Nelson shook his head. “Really? I’ve downloaded his greatest hits into my leg. I’ll play them for you later. Anyway,” he continued as he pulled the drawstring closed on his sleeping bag and loaded it into a plastic crate with the rest of the gear, “Doody was the keyboard player. He was a nutcase. Used to do this crazy dance and end up diving into the crowd. Bonkers.” Pogo laughed at the memory of Doody performing. “The band split up years ago, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at him, would you? I mean, he looks as if he’s just about to go onstage.” Pogo had now reduced their entire camp into three plastic crates and two rolls of plastic sheeting. “I used to have all his records—must get him to sign ’em. You know, what you and I found is a pretty big deal, Nelson. I mean, who k
new that fixing a leak would lead to this, eh?”

  Doody finished his call by saying, “Laters, potaters!” in a very loud voice, and marched over to Nelson and Pogo. “The TV news guys are already on their way. Better smarten yourselves up, like. Yer gonna be famous, Nelson.”

  Nelson didn’t know what to say. He knew he was supposed to feel excited about what Doody was saying, but he didn’t.

  Pogo took a look at his nephew and responded on his behalf. “Listen, Doody, that might not be a good idea right now, him being on the news, I mean,” said Pogo with a carefulness Nelson hadn’t heard from him before. Doody listened as Pogo explained about Celeste’s disappearance and how Pogo was Nelson’s guardian until the family came home.

  Doody frowned and shook his head. “You’re a brave little bloke,” he said. “And when all this with your sister is sorted out, I am personally gonna make sure that you, and not this great plum”— he pointed at Uncle Pogo—“are recognized as the genius who found Sir Christopher Wren’s secret laboratory. All right?”

  Nelson nodded and smiled. Pogo and Doody were standing next to each other and looking at him like proud parents.

  “Good,” said Doody. “That’ll impress yer mates, won’t it?”

  “Yep,” said Nelson, although his brain was quick to remind him he had no mates to impress.

  Uncle Pogo took one last look around the crypt and then went past Nelson to pick something off the floor. It was the foil package that had contained a slice of toast, only now it was completely empty and ripped to shreds.

  “Ah, glad to see you finally ate something,” said Uncle Pogo, and scrunched the wrapper into his overalls pocket. They all began to walk out carrying the crates and plastic, but Nelson was looking all around the crypt.