by Adam Frost
Danny didn’t reply.
“Oh well, it’s of no importance,” sniffed the bald man. “Just hand me the cosmic remote and I’ll leave you and your family in peace.”
Danny looked at the man’s yellow eyes and papery skin and shuddered in horror.
“Where’s my Uncle Charlie?” Danny whispered.
“Give me the remote and I’ll tell you,” said the bald man.
“No.Tell me now,” breathed Danny.
“Give me the remote or you’ll be meeting him sooner than you think,” said the bald man.
He stared at the remote in Danny’s hand. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and one of his legs began to twitch with excitement.
Danny took one step backwards. The bald man took two steps forwards. Danny took two steps backwards.The bald man took three steps forwards. Danny’s mind was suddenly clear. He was going to press Pause and run away when he heard a creak on the landing. He looked up and saw his sister making her way nervously down the stairs.
“Danny,” she murmured. “What’s going on? Is there someone there with you?”
“Run away, Mia!” Danny whispered urgently. “Get out of here!”
“Has that man come for you?” asked Mia.
“The Mighty Scientist or whatever?”
“Mia, just get out of here,” gabbled Danny. “Don’t come back! Don’t ever come back!”
The bald man looked at Mia and smiled. A thought seemed to pass from his head and into Danny’s. If you press Pause, what will happen when you press Play? I’ll still be here with your sister. If you press Rewind and then Play, I’ll still come to the house tonight and if you’re not here, you’ll never see your sister again.
“Danny,” whispered Mia. “None of the lights work, so I brought my torch.”
Then Danny noticed something strange. The bald man froze. A look of genuine fear crossed his face.
“Torch,” he hissed.
Mia flicked her torch on and swung the beam round so that it pointed down into the hall.
She located Danny and said, “I thought you were sleeping in the washing machine.”
She swung the beam towards the front door. It swept over the bald man’s neck and, as it did, it cut straight into his skin and left a thick red stripe under his chin.
“Drat!” the bald man roared, clutching his neck in pain.
“Hubert! Arthur! Montgomery! Grab that torch!” he barked.
The robot mice scuttled down his body and across the carpet. Mia watched them curiously as they hopped up the stairs towards her.
“What peculiar creatures,” she sniffed as she lifted up her foot.
There was a CRUNCH as she trod on the first mouse, then a CRACK as she stamped on the second mouse and a SQUELCH as she squashed the third.
“N-no,” stammered the bald man. “My – rodents!”
“Mia, point the torch at him again!” Danny called out. “It’s like he can’t stand bright light.”
“Oh I see,” said Mia. “Righty-ho.”
She pointed the torch directly at the bald man. As it crossed his body, it seemed to score a line across his chest, through his shirt. He was so sensitive to light that even his clothes couldn’t protect him.
“Curses – should – have – put on – special suit,” groaned the bald man, staggering backwards in agony.
Mia moved the torch in zigzags down his legs, making him hop from one foot to the other.
Finally she trained the torch on his face.
“And – should – have – put on – special – cream,” hissed the bald man.
His skin grew redder and redder, slowly turning brown and then purple. Sweat streamed down his face and steam poured off his head.
“I’ll come back,” he spat. “I’ll find you – I’ll find both of you…”
He turned round and fled. A fourth robot mouse fell out of his pocket with a clunk and, after a brief glassy look at Danny and Mia, it scuttled away after its master.
Danny and Mia stared at the front door for a few seconds, half expecting the bald man – or one of his mice – to come back.
Then Danny strode across to the light switch in the hall. He tried turning it on.
“He really did shut down all the power in the house,” murmured Danny.
“Did you see the way the torch hurt him through his clothes?” said Mia. “How bizarre was that?”
There was a sudden bump in their parents’ bedroom. A door opened upstairs and their mother started hissing instructions to their father.
“Danny, you’d better get out of here,” said Mia. “They’ll go mad if they find you down here.”
Danny nodded. “Thanks.”
“Here,” said Mia. “Take this. The light seemed to hurt him.”
She held up the torch.
Danny shook his head. “No.You keep it. In case he comes back here. I’ve got my remote and next time I’ll use it on him.”
Danny brandished his remote like a sword.
Mr and Mrs Danger began to creep down the stairs, whispering to each other.
“I’m telling you, there’s someone down here,” said Mrs Danger.
“You’re imagining things,” replied Mr Danger.
“I bet they’ve trodden mud into my carpets,” said Mrs Danger, “and ruined my lovely clean kitchen.”
But when Mr and Mrs Danger reached the hallway, there was nobody there.
Danny ran up the front garden and into the street.
He glanced left and right, scanning his surroundings for a bald head, yellow eyes, a white coat.
He remembered Mia saying, “The light seemed to hurt him,” and he ran towards the nearest streetlight.
When he reached the lamp post, he glanced around for any signs of movement, but there was nothing.
He decided to stay close to the streetlights, reasoning that they were like giant torches and would hopefully stop the bald man from approaching.
He walked along the pavement. After a few minutes, the light from one lamp post ran out. There was a strip of darkness and then the light from the next lamp post began.
The strip of darkness seemed to throb and pulse. It felt like a black river or a dark pit that Danny had to leap over without falling into. He imagined hands waiting there in the darkness, hands waiting to pull him down, to drag him away.
He took a deep breath. He sprinted across the patch of darkness, the air roaring in his ears, pulling at his clothes and whipping round his feet.
He bounded into the next pool of light, slowing down gradually as he reached the centre.
Using this method, he made his way along the street, dashing from one lamp post to the next, tearing across stretches of darkness and lingering in patches of light.
Then, at the end of the street, there was a problem. A streetlight flickering on, off, on, off. One moment it lit up the pavement, the next it plunged that part of the street into total darkness.
He wasn’t sure if he imagined a pair of yellow eyes waiting for him in the shadows.
The streetlight flickered on again, revealing nothing but an empty pavement.
Danny looked down at his remote. He had almost forgotten it was in his hand, ready to use. He placed his thumb on the Pause button.
But something stopped him from pressing it. He realised that he wanted to know what would happen next. It might be dangerous, it might be frightening, but he wanted to be around when it happened.
So he looked again at the light flickering under the lamp post. It was time to decide whether to push ahead or change direction.
At that moment, he saw Eric’s house at the end of the street, just beyond the flickering lamp post. Of course! He wasn’t sure if Eric would be back from his Auntie Gladys’s, but his house would still be the safest place for Danny.
He waited till the light flashed on, and darted forwards as quickly as he could. He was halfway through when he felt the light trembling, so he forced himself to run even faster. A split second later he was
out the other side, across the tiny strip of darkness, and panting beside the next lamp post down, safe in a solid column of brightness. After getting his breath back, he sprinted over to Eric’s house, rushing even more determinedly from one circle of light to the next.
He was relieved to find that there was a lamp post outside Eric’s house. Even better, when he walked towards the house, a security light immediately pinged on, bathing the front lawn in a yellow glow. Danny took his usual route into the house, clambering on the extension roof and pulling Eric’s window open.
In the darkness of Eric’s room, Danny saw that his friend was lying in his bed, fast asleep.
It didn’t matter. Danny felt better already.
He lay down on the floor next to Eric’s bed and stared up at the ceiling.
He would wait a few hours till Eric woke up and then talk to him about the cosmic remote, his Uncle Charlie, the bald man and what he should do next.
He lay there, telling himself it would be safer if he stayed awake.
Less than a minute later, he was asleep.
Outside in the street, a cat sat quietly underneath a parked car. It stared up at Eric’s house with glittering red eyes while the felt on its body rose and fell with a soft mechanical purr.
6
PAUSE
When Danny woke up, it was dawn.
Sunlight streamed into the bedroom through a gap in the curtains, making everything – Eric’s books and toys and posters – twinkle with life.
Danny could sense the remote lying on his chest. He had felt sure that nobody would catch him or attack him in Eric’s house. Happily his instincts had been right.
Memories from the night before flooded into his head. For a few moments, his heart beat faster as he thought about his uncle and Mia and the bald man and the electronic mice.
He wondered if he could rewind the past twenty-four hours and make everything different – find his uncle, warn his sister and hand out torches.They could fight the bald man side by side.
Eric’s voice brought him back to the present.
“All right, Danny?” said Eric. “What you doing here?”
“Oh, hi Eric,” said Danny with a dazed smile.
“Did your mum actually throw you out?” Eric asked, sitting up in his bed.
“No,” said Danny. “Nothing like that.” He looked down at the remote. “It’s about this remote control. It’s got cosmic powers. It can move time around. You know, stop it, move it backwards and forwards. I got it from my uncle. Seems he works for some secret gadget police or something. And now this old bald man’s chasing me, trying to take it off me.”
Eric looked blank while he took all of this in. Then an amazed smile spread across his face.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. “Show us how it works.”
“OK,” said Danny. He was about to press Pause when he noticed that the Play button was flashing.
“That’s odd,” said Danny. “It’s never done that before.”
“What is it?” said Eric. “Are we about to get rewound? Or paused? That must feel so weird.”
Danny pressed Play and two shapes shot out of the end of the remote.
One was a young man with spiky hair, thick-rimmed glasses and a massive pair of headphones round his neck. The other was a young woman with dyed pink hair, glittery make-up and fluorescent green leggings.
“Hi,” said the young man. “I’m Jasper.”
“And I’m Roxie,” said the young woman.
“You’re clearly using your remote for something else at the moment, so we’ll leave a message,” said Jasper.
The outlines of Jasper and Roxie flickered and then stabilised. Eric stared at them with his mouth wide open.
“Your uncle asked us to come,” said Roxie. “EUREKA! agents have to watch each other’s backs, you know. He gave us this letter to deliver.”
“Yeah,” said Jasper, pulling two sheets of paper out of his pocket. “Don’t know why he didn’t want us to email it. Could have used my new air slate, it’s got this incredible—”
“Jasper,” said Roxie. “Just deliver the letter.”
“But the air slate’s amazing,” protested Jasper. “You just speak to it and the words appear in mid-air.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Roxie. “I’ve had one for like nine months. Jeez, Jasper, you can move things around with your mind, you don’t need half these gadgets anyway. Just do what Charlie asked and give Danny his letter.”
“Fine, whatever,” said Jasper. “Let’s mince some molecules.”
He held the letter in his right hand, closed his eyes and flicked it through the air towards Danny.
When it was halfway between Jasper and Danny, something unusual happened. When it was closer to Jasper, it was still a recording, a matrix of colour and light produced by the cosmic remote, wavering and shimmering like Jasper and Roxie. When the letter was falling towards Danny’s feet, it began to look denser, its corners grew sharper, its colour was more defined and the ink on its pages grew darker and clearer. It began to look like everything else in Eric’s room. By the time it landed on the floor it became an ordinary common-or-garden letter, no different from the kind of letter that you would get through your door – you could pick it up, turn it over, fold it up.
Danny and Eric stared at it for a few seconds.
“Way to go, Jasper!” exclaimed Roxie. “The package has arrived at its destination!”
“Right, can I show them the air slate now?” asked Jasper. “Or at least my wind skimmer?”
“The Professor confiscated your wind skimmer because you hit a pigeon with it,” sighed Roxie. “Besides, Danny’s got to open his letter.” She looked straight ahead. “Read the note as quickly as you can, Danny. And remember – you’ve got a lot of friends at EUREKA!”
Jasper and Roxie flickered, faded and finally fizzled out.
Eric was the first to speak. “Wow, your gadget is amazing.”
“I didn’t even know it could do that,” said Danny.
“Aren’t you going to read the letter then?” asked Eric.
“Yeah,” said Danny. “I suppose I should.”
“Let me read it over your shoulder,” begged Eric.
So Danny picked up the two sheets of paper and the two boys read the letter.
First, there was a note from Danny’s uncle. It read:
Then there was a sheet of paper that Uncle Charlie had clearly ripped out of a textbook.
“Now I get it!” murmured Danny. “Why he turned off the electricity in our house. Why Mia’s torch burned him. And why he wants to get his hands on my remote.”
“You’re saying this guy’s real?” asked Eric.
“He’s the one who’s been setting all these robot animals on me,” said Danny. “He’s the one who broke into my house last night.”
“Flippin’ ’eck,” said Eric.
“But what’s happened to Uncle Charlie? Why didn’t those two people tell me?” lamented Danny.
Eric spent a few seconds looking at the remote in Danny’s hand.
“Hey, listen,” he said. “If people can contact you through the remote, then maybe you can use it to get in touch with your uncle.”
Danny looked at Eric and then down at the remote.
“Maybe. But I don’t know how to make it send messages,” said Danny.
“I’ll have a try if you like!” said Eric, hopefully.
“No!” cried Danny, and clutched the remote tightly to his chest.
There was an awkward few seconds, as Danny stared into space and Eric played sheepishly with his toys.
Eric picked up his remote-controlled robot and fiddled with one of the arms.
“Look, sorry, I lost it a bit there,” said Danny apologetically. “It’s been a weird few days. Hey, Eric, why don’t I show you what the remote can do? It’s not like this Night Scientist bloke is going to be after me during the day.”
“Cool!” replied Eric cheerfully.
“Shall I pause
time first?” asked Danny.
“Yes, definitely!” said Eric.
“So you see that robot in your hand?” said Danny. “I’m going to pause time, take it out of your hand and put it on your desk. So you’ll just be aware of the robot vanishing from your hand and reappearing on the desk. OK?”
“Fantastic!” said Eric, trembling very slightly.
Danny pressed Pause and put the robot on Eric’s desk. He stood in front of Eric again and pressed Play.
Eric came back to life and flinched. He flexed his fingers, but there was no robot in his hand. There it was on his desk.
He looked stunned and then delighted. “That is the best thing ever!”
“Now I’m going to rewind time,” said Danny. “So look, you have to concentrate on this moment, because you’re not going to remember anything from now on.”
“OK,” said Eric, frowning hard, trying to concentrate as much as he could.
“I’m going to get something from the future and bring it back to this point in time,” explained Danny.
“Got it.” Eric nodded, still frowning.
“So let’s write a letter,” said Danny, moving across to Eric’s desk.
Eric followed him. “What do you mean?”
“Here you are,” said Danny, handing Eric a pen. “Write yourself a letter from the future.”
Eric took the pen and said: “Wow!” He picked up a piece of paper from the desk.
After holding the pen a few centimetres above the piece of paper for two minutes, he said: “What shall I write?”
“Anything,” said Danny.
“OK,” said Eric. He scratched his head and bit the end of the pen. Finally he wrote:
“Write down something that nobody knows but you. To prove it’s really you,” suggested Danny.
Eric wrote:
“OK, great,” said Danny. He took the letter from Eric and folded it in half.
Then he pressed Rewind. He watched Eric unwriting the letter although the paper itself wasn’t there – it was just the pen hoovering up the ink. Then when Eric had scampered backwards into the middle of the room, Danny pressed Play.