by J S Landor
Chapter 3
‘Mind where you’re going!’ said the woman with the brolly.
‘Sorry,’ mumbled Jack, without looking up.
The afternoon traffic honked noisily as the woman gazed after him. He kept lurching from side to side, watching his feet instead of the pavement ahead. A man with a Yorkshire terrier stepped smartly out of the way, but somehow Jack had got tangled in the dog’s lead and a great deal of yapping was going on.
The woman clicked her tongue. She’d read about underage drinking and here was the proof of it – a schoolboy drunk in the middle of the afternoon! The thunder rumbled overhead. With a flurry of indignation, she opened her umbrella and hurried away.
Jack kept his eyes glued to the ground, unaware of the impression he’d created. He was too busy playing a game. It called for serious concentration, not to mention some fancy footwork: he was avoiding all the cracks in the pavement.
If you make it home without treading on a line, he told himself, they’ll close school … He jumped two squares to the right. You’ll have an amazing adventure … He leapt three squares forwards. Aaand … He wobbled slightly. Blunt will get it. Big time.
The sky glimmered with distant lightning and the wind licked at the trees. In a garden across the road, a flowerpot crashed to the ground, leaving an untidy heap of soil and several red geraniums scattered on the lawn.
Perched on a nearby fence, a magpie, as big as a crow, let out a harsh, rattling cry: ‘Tsche, tsche, tsche.’ It seemed to be laughing at him.
Jack looked down to find he was standing on a crack. ‘Oi! Now look what you made me do!’ Without thinking, he reached for a stone and hurled it at the bird. ‘Waster!’
The magpie took off, clapping its wings, and disappeared over the rooftops, screeching insults of its own.
Jack stared miserably at his feet. The ancient black plimsolls which he’d been forced to borrow from school lost property made him feel like an oversized ballerina. Sadly, the comparison had occurred to his classmates too. Everyone, except his best friend Charlie, had dissolved into hysterics when he’d turned up for registration.
Mr Marsh, his form tutor, hadn’t been exactly sympathetic either. Usually a kind man, Boggy hadn’t bought his story about a mad dog mauling his trainers. And since Jack couldn’t tell him what had really happened, the teacher had given him a sad look and a lunchtime detention for being late.
Big splashes of rain started to fall. Turning up Hill Rise, Jack could hear the wind chimes on the apple tree in the front garden jangling furiously.
He stopped in his tracks. Ahead, a dark cloud was moving in his direction and something about it looked very peculiar. He screwed up his eyes. It was sort of solid and appeared to be spinning. In fact, now it came closer, he could see it wasn’t a cloud at all. He walked faster. Then he broke into a run. A blur of whirling shapes, like gigantic insects, swarmed towards him. They looked far too big to be bees. What else then? Locusts?
As he vaulted the garden wall at number 12, he felt a thud on his back, right between his shoulder blades. He twisted round, trying to see what it was. There was a second thud and a third. Something landed on his shoulder, then on his head. The ‘thing’ wriggled in his hair. Panicking, he shook his head wildly and put his hand up to extract it. Its skin felt leathery and its legs – all four of them – were scrabbling madly to escape the tangle.
Before he had time to remove the creature, a dozen more fell around him and then a deluge.
Frogs were falling from the sky like enormous green hailstones. Some of them lay stunned on the ground, others leapt in all directions. Jack pulled up the collar of his coat and bolted for the front door.
Inside, he jumped up and down. Something was wriggling down his back. He ripped the coat off and threw it on the hall floor. A tiny frog, which had been clinging to the lining, hopped into the darkness of the cupboard under the stairs.
‘Hang it on the peg!’ bellowed Nan from the sitting room.
Jack burst in on her. ‘You won’t believe this, but it’s raining frogs!’
Nan looked over her newspaper and pushed her glasses down her nose. ‘You mean “raining cats and dogs”,’ she said. ‘I think you’ll find that’s the usual expression.’
‘No! I mean frogs!’ cried Jack. ‘Come and look!’ He dragged her out of the chair and propelled her towards the bay window.
A particularly large frog hit the glass with a splat. Nan took a step back. ‘My word!’ she said.
A mass of seething green bodies covered the front lawn. There must have been several hundred at least. Some were dead, others dying, and still more were scrabbling desperately over each other to escape. Nan’s display of autumn dahlias had been completely flattened, and before their very eyes the garden was fast turning into a mud bath.
Jack gazed at the squirming bodies. Those that could still move were heading out of the garden.
‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ he said.
Nan shook her head. ‘Can’t say I have.’ Another frog hit the window and she winced. ‘I read a news report once – some village in Kent, I think … The frogs got sucked up by a whirling wind, a bit like a small tornado. They were dropped nearly a mile away, poor things.’
Odin leapt onto the windowsill and sat with his ears pricked, his tail twitching furiously. The frog rain had stopped and the three of them watched in stunned silence as the survivors limped away.
At last, Nan turned to look at Jack. She was about to suggest they go outside to clear up when she noticed how exhausted he seemed. With a glance at the black plimsolls she said, ‘Come and sit down. How was your day?’
‘Fine,’ Jack lied, flopping into a big armchair. To avoid any more questions he cut in with one of his own. ‘So has it ever rained cats and dogs?’
‘Not exactly. It’s just a saying,’ said Nan. ‘But there was a time when sailors thought cats could influence the weather. They were supposed to bring heavy rain.’
Odin gave a low angry growl and the fur on his back bristled.
‘Dogs, on the other hand, were connected with the wind. So “raining cats and dogs” is a way of describing strong rain and wind.’
Odin hissed angrily and fluffed out his fur.
An intruder had appeared in the front garden. It was five times bigger than him with eyes of amber that kept looking his way. And it was eating the bodies of the frogs, those that hadn’t survived the downpour.
‘Odin, as you know, is named after a storm-god,’ Nan went on. ‘Is this anything to do with you?’ she joked.
More hisses issued from the windowsill, followed by another throaty growl. Finally, the cat spat explosively.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, what’s the matter with you? I’m trying to talk to Jack.’ Nan went to the window.
The intruder had vanished.
‘Really, Odin, why don’t you go out? It’s no wonder you’re in such a bad temper. You’ve been inside all day.’ She turned back to Jack, who’d taken the opportunity to slip away.
‘Everything all right at school?’ she called.
‘Yep,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Tons of homework.’
Nan listened to the footsteps on the stairs. With a heavy heart, she turned back to Odin. ‘Doesn’t give much away, does he?’
The cat answered with a horrible yowl that sounded like a curse.
Chapter 4
Jack sat at his desk and stared into the dark void of his computer screen.
Next to the keyboard, Nan had left a glass of milk and a plate of homemade biscuits. They looked oddly volcanic, like lumps of lava. He nibbled warily at the edge of one. Nan was always devising strange new recipes. He never knew what to expect next.
The biscuit melted on his tongue and his eyes closed. Mmm … candyfloss! Weird, but delicious.
The taste reminded him of the funfair in
Dunton where they spent their holidays. From the Ferris wheel, you could see for miles along the coast to a finger of land they called The Spike. And there on a rock, surrounded by sea, stood the Pentland lighthouse. It looked magical, a red and white candy cane engulfed by foaming waves.
The wind rattled the window, making him jump.
He gazed at the dreary heap of books. Homework: time to do some. He’d missed so many deadlines his teachers had put him ‘on report’. Nan would go into orbit if she found out.
He picked up the latest assignment. ‘Write about a building of historic interest that you have visited.’ He laid his head on the desk. Historic interest! The two words didn’t go together.
He ate another biscuit. Then he clicked his fingers. Of course! The lighthouse was historic. It must be at least a hundred years old. He’d never actually been inside, but so what? He’d find a website, copy and paste the text and be done with it.
He turned on the computer. A tiny cartoon duck in a bow tie waddled across the screen to a fanfare of trumpets. He waved and quacked cheerfully, performed a series of cartwheels and then crashed into the recycle bin. Jack smiled. He must have seen it a thousand times before, but Mac the Quack always amused him.
The monitor beeped and a chat box flashed up: ‘Charlie Day is online’.
A message appeared. ‘hey! u ok?’
‘still alive,’ Jack typed.
‘those muppets need a brain transplant … when they gonna grow up …’
The cursor flashed while Jack’s best friend waited for a response. ‘they went too far :( we have to stop them,’ Charlie added.
‘yeah,’ replied Jack miserably. They’d already had this conversation at school and neither of them had a solution.
‘c u 2nite?’
‘dunno …’ he wrote. ‘got to work :( … mebbe talk l8r.’
Somewhere in the house Odin mewed plaintively, but no one paid any attention. The radio blared in the kitchen and a delicious smell of fried onions wafted up through the floorboards.
Mac meanwhile had climbed out of the recycle bin. Wearing the lid on his head, he tapped his foot, awaiting a command. A second later he toppled over and lay flat on his back, as if he’d died of boredom.
Jack punched in the words ‘Pentland Lighthouse’ in the search box. Then he hit the return key. He might as well have detonated a bomb. Mac began jumping up and down, making a cutting motion across his throat, signalling shutdown.
‘Whoa! What did I do?’ yelled Jack.
Just before the computer crashed, a message appeared: Fatal error: system immobilised.
***
He let out a long groan. The machine appeared to be dead, and when he tried rebooting, all he got was a grey screen. He buried his head in his hands: the day couldn’t get any worse.
There was a soft thud on the desk beside him and he felt Odin’s delicate nose touch his ear.
‘Go away,’ he said, without looking up.
Odin paced backwards and forwards, butting his hands and making funny chirruping sounds.
‘I said leave – me – alone!’ Jack elbowed the cat onto the floor.
Odin leapt straight back up, his tail lashing from side to side, and yowled with fury.
‘Okay! I’m sorry. There. Satisfied?’
The caterwauling continued louder and louder.
‘What is the matter with you today?’
Odin went to the door. It was clear he wanted to be followed.
Reluctantly, Jack got up and trailed after him, thumping down the stairs, along the hall and into a small dark room at the back of the house. He felt for the light switch and flicked it on. A mouse scurried away under the skirting board.
‘You’re not doing your job properly,’ he grumbled.
The cat gave him a long hard stare. This room was so untidy it would defeat even the toughest mouser. Piles of books and papers lay everywhere – on the mantelpiece, the window ledge, the chairs, the top of an old piano, all over the floor. It was Nan’s study. She’d once joked that it resembled the state of her mind. Jack was inclined to agree.
Odin had disappeared beneath a half-moon table which served as Nan’s writing desk. Now that he had Jack’s full attention, he seemed a little calmer.
The table was pushed up against an old door which hadn’t been used for years. A heavy, faded, green curtain hung over it to keep out the draught. At the bottom, however, the material was pinned back to reveal a large hinged cat flap. This was Odin’s exit to the outside world. And it was blocked. A small brown parcel had somehow got jammed diagonally across the opening.
‘Oh, I see! You can’t get out,’ said Jack.
Odin’s yellow eyes glinted.
Jack leant forwards to remove the obstruction and, without wasting a second, Odin leapt out, leaving the cat flap banging to and fro. An icy blast of wind whistled into the room, blowing Nan’s papers everywhere.
Jack crawled out from under the table and sat cross-legged among the towers of dusty books, turning the parcel over. To his surprise it was addressed to him:
Jack Tideswell
12 Hill Rise
Morton Muxloe
Somershire
There was no stamp or postmark, just his name and address. He stared at the bold, spiky letters. They had obviously been written in a hurry. But something about them made him catch his breath – the handwriting looked strangely familiar, like his own.
Outside, Odin paused briefly to sharpen his claws on a fence post before plunging into the long wet grass. The trees creaked and groaned and somewhere close by, a garden gate banged shut. The pungent scent of wolf was everywhere.
Chapter 5
The wrapping around the parcel was actually a small paper bag, the kind Nan used to put sandwiches in. It had been rolled over at the top, rather than fastened with sticky tape, and was covered in splodges of mud.
Jack’s nose wrinkled. A slimy trail glistened in one corner where some creature, a snail probably, had crawled over it. He ripped the paper off and threw it aside.
In his hand, he held a round piece of metal about the size and shape of a compact disc. It was heavier than a normal CD and bronze-ish rather than aluminium, but he couldn’t think what else it might be.
On one side, engraved near the edge, he noticed a shape that looked like a fish, the kind a small child might draw. α
He shrugged. He hadn’t ordered any games recently, though it might be a demo. Sometimes companies sent him free software to tempt him into buying stuff. Yet there was no label, nothing to identify it. And why had the postman delivered it to the back of the house – through the cat flap of all places? It made no sense.
He slowly climbed the stairs back to his room, running his fingers over the metal surface. It was pockmarked in places and had a bluish tinge, which gave it a kind of antique quality. If this was a game, the designers had gone to a lot of trouble. He’d never seen anything like it before.
As he entered the room, the computer screen flickered. A second later it turned black and a small blinking cursor appeared in the top left-hand corner.
Jack stood still, listening to the gentle whirr of the hard drive. Strange, when only ten minutes ago the machine had been completely dead. The disc felt slightly warm in his hand. He walked to his desk, put it next to the keyboard and sat down, bemused.
Not only had the computer woken itself up, but a series of equations had begun rolling down the screen. It was nothing like the normal startup. It looked more like some nightmare maths test.
Line after line of letters, numbers and calculations scrolled by, until eventually he couldn’t focus on any of them. Half-mesmerised, he gazed through the storm of writing to the blackness beyond. There was his room in reverse: the unmade bed, the wardrobe with one door open, the rattling window and the piles of homework.
At lea
st we’re up and running, he told his pale reflection.
Finally, the equations came to an abrupt halt and the screen filled with an intense blue. With a smile of relief, he laced his fingers together and flexed them, waiting for his homepage to appear.
But it never did.
Instead, a low thrumming came from the machine, so strong it made the whole desk vibrate. A pen rolled onto the floor, books and paper shifted, and the glass of milk wobbled. His hand shot out to steady it, but the liquid continued to tremble. He could feel the vibration running up his arms and down his spine until it seemed to pass through his flesh into the marrow of his bones.
‘No!’ He stood up in alarm. An intense blue-white light had flared around the desk, enveloping him. For a second he found himself fighting for breath as something powerful tugged at his very core. Then, without warning, a plummeting sensation took over and his room and everything in it seemed to fall away.
It was worse than any rollercoaster ride; his stomach lurched into his chest, his heart pounded in his throat and his head felt dangerously light. He flung his arms wide, grabbing at non-existent handholds. What had he done? What the hell was happening to him? He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
Chapter 6
The rumble of a huge engine reverberated all around. Jack remained curled in a tight ball, every muscle of his body braced for impact. But nothing happened – no bone-crunching landing, no unbearable pain. Instead, a soft springy mattress bounced gently beneath him.
He sat bolt upright, checking his arms and legs. No blood, nothing broken … where was he? Heavy curtains enclosed him on every side and when he reached up, he found he could easily touch the ceiling. It felt like a coffin. With a sharp intake of breath, he whisked one of the curtains aside.
Below him, he saw a dimly lit, wood-panelled room. Though small, it was extremely luxurious, with oil paintings on the walls, a rich red carpet on the floor and furniture of polished mahogany. A stag stared out from a tapestry and, beside it, the night sky was visible through a round window.