Grinny

by Nicholas Fisk

  ‘Punish him!’ she says.

  The film star, the Bishop, Sir Tobyn – all of them move up behind Banjo. The Minister woman has the water carafe in both hands.

  She raises the carafe and smashes it down on Banjo’s head.

  I don’t want to watch this sequence again. The blood … and the way the speakers move in, so slowly, so polite – and the way they hit him and hit him and hit him.

  If they had been in a rage I suppose it would be bearable – but they’re not, they’re just machines, they smile and smile and hit and hit, taking their time, making sure they don’t get in each other’s way …

  And the audience. If you keep your eyes closed and just listen, you can hear the audience’s voices. They are buzzing politely, the sound you hear in the interval between acts. An interested, polite hum of conversation.

  Above it, you can just hear the wail of Beth’s voice, like a distant siren. (She was screaming and sobbing, her head in her hands, hiding her eyes. I remember putting my arms round her but I can’t remember feeling any strong emotion, I was half in the Lisa fog, half out of it. My parents did nothing, nor did Mac. They just looked at the stage, observed what was happening – and smiled.)

  Lisa is on her feet again. Now her voice is beginning to break down. She says, ‘Punished! You will be punished! There can be no … You will all be … They are coming, your masters, they are very close …’ The fingers of one hand are scuttling over her side, where Banjo hit her – moving like disturbed ants, checking damage, getting ready to repair it. Her arm is horrible, slung across her body with the elbow and wrist out of joint and those fingers like crawling maggots. Her hair no longer seems to fit her head: her left eye has a huge black pupil – the iris mechanism must have gone wrong.

  And still the fingers run and knot and scrabble.

  I ought not to watch it, I’ll destroy the tape some day. But not just yet.

  And then the booming noise starts.

  BREAKDOWN

  Can you hear it, that booming? You have to turn up the sound. At first, it’s only a sort of mains hum, a constant bass note. But then it begins to pulse. My father says it is rather like the sound the German bombers made in the Blitz on London.

  It is the sound of Them, the invaders from out there.

  The noise of their spacecraft.

  Did the panel of speakers hear it? I don’t know. They are still grouped round Banjo. He moves, feebly. Now they stand and stare straight into the audience, like people in shock.

  And the audience changes. Some of them are coming out of the fog. Before, they were all grinning, applauding puppets. Now some of them are people again, with minds of their own. You can see it on your video – the way they turn to each other, begin talking. They seem to be saying, ‘What’s wrong?’ (It was like that with my mother and father. Their heads went together, she took his hand. And Mac was talking to Beth, firing questions at her. She didn’t hear. ‘Get on with it!’ she muttered. ‘Die!’)

  Before our eyes, Lisa is dying. It is happening just as it happened with Grinny. Or perhaps it is worse: only seconds ago Lisa was so beautiful. Now she is crumbling, breaking up. Her mouth dribbles and speaks gibberish. ‘Slaves!’ says her cracking, splitting voice. ‘You will serve! … We will kill all those who … Such fools, it was so easy!’

  Her words are mangled, garbled, choked. Her mouth writhes out of time with her speech.

  Then she breaks into Grinnish – that lightning-fast electronic twittering, a torrent of signals, the language she uses to speak to Them. Grinny used that language too. We heard her. Bunny heard her, on that morning she gave Lisa breakfast in bed.

  Lisa makes her last effort.

  She seems to clutch at the radiance of the hundreds of theatre lights. ‘YOU REMEMBER ME!’ she shouts.

  But now her voice is a squawk, her mouth is a wet, twisting, rubber ring, her left eye is a black hole. She begins to shake as if something inside her is running wild. Again she screams, ‘YOU REMEMBER ME!’ but you can hardly make out the words. They are just a jangle, an electronic howl through a broken speaker.

  The booming becomes so loud that it drowns everything; and the theatre begins to shake.

  The ceiling plaster above the dress circle comes down first. The video records the screams. You can see the people trying to fight their way through the great cushion of dust that bulges around and over them.

  The whole place shakes – the little lamps on the walls, the beams of the big spots on Lisa.

  Some people try to scramble over each other in the lines of seats, they’re trying to escape. But most are like me, with their hands over their ears, trying to keep the mind-shaking booming noise out. The noise rocks your brain as if it would shake it loose. My father tries to spread himself over Beth and me to protect us. But then two boxes collapse on each other on the other side of the theatre and he says, ‘We’ve got to get out! For God’s sake –!’

  Then the light comes.

  Look at your video, it’s all there. Nearly all, anyhow.

  You see the light stab down through the roof of the theatre like a rapier blade: a thick, solid rod of violet light, so bright it hurts the eyes.

  Down the rod slithers dust, lazy violet clouds of dust, circling like clouds of midges.

  The rod of light plunges straight into Lisa’s skull.

  She is flung to the ground. She begins to knot and writhe and break up …

  When I was little, we went to town to do shopping in time for Christmas. We shopped till the store closed. We took a last look at my favourite window of the store. It had a fairy grotto, mechanical animals and puppets, and a mother and father and children dressed in their party best. It was magic.

  Then a girl – an ordinary girl wearing everyday clothes and special soft slippers – entered the scene and started pulling everything to pieces! She tore the clothes off the dummies until they were naked and bald, and you could see their joints. She busily threw things behind her into a crate, not caring what she did. I began to cry.

  A young man came to help. He pulled the mannequin people apart! I began to scream, banging my fists on the window. My parents had to drag me away. ‘They’re just getting ready another display, darling, something even nicer!’ But I couldn’t stop crying.

  Lisa was like one of those shop-window figures. Except that she moved. She kept moving, she wouldn’t stop moving. And her mouth still smiled beneath the glaring eyes.

  At the end, there were parts of her, separate parts, that twitched and jumped and snaked about. And an arm with the fingers still wriggling and scuttling. And the violet light digging into the mess, powering it, making it happen. And the people screaming and trying to get out.

  But not Beth. My parents were tugging at her. She took no notice. She stayed hunched in her seat, drinking in every moment of Lisa’s death throes, biting her lower lip and muttering, ‘Go on! Go on!’ She was clutching the seat, refusing to be moved.

  So we saw the silver rat.

  It suddenly jumped out of the mess of twisted clothes covering what was left of Lisa. It was the same machine that worked Grinny: the same hunched, quick, shining rat thing. It was snapping at Lisa’s body – snapping, tugging, worrying at it.

  It was pulling her to pieces, tearing joints apart, dismembering her.

  When it had finished its work it sort of stood up on its hind legs (but of course it was not a rat, it had no hind legs, it was a horrible mechanism). It seemed to look upwards into the beam of light.

  Then it flashed and twinkled and moved faster than ever – and ran up the beam. It went very fast, as fast as a man could throw a tennis ball. It shot up the beam, out through the roof and into the spaceship.

  ‘Done!’ I heard Beth say. ‘Dead!’

  She turned to me, her eyes on fire with joy, and said, ‘We’ve won.’

  SUPERBRAVE

  Beth’s diary, 1 October

  … everybody’s so ungrateful, I could spit, I saved the WORLD but nobody ever says ‘
Thank you very much, O you were wonderful, a true heroine, we are so grateful’. All I get is ‘Could you put the washing-up away, do it now please, not later’ or ‘Beth, your homework was very slipshod,’ or Timothy makes his stupid jokes about me having spots but I haven’t I suppose he thinks he’s being amusing I think it’s infantile.

  Of course, everyone was hypnotized & they still don’t remember & realize so they cannot remember the awful threat I saved them from. Most great heroines get statues but I don’t even have my deeds remembered.

  O that night in the theatre!!! I killed her, I did it alone, I am glad I did it tho it was not nice to watch. Timothy keeps asking me how I did it, well if he is that stupid he can go on asking till the cows come home my lips are sealed for all Eternity & anyhow it was partly luck I suppose. I asked Mr Wells what stopped a battery making electricity & he said ‘O almost anything’ so I used almost any liquid I could find so long as it was clear and did not show up. I don’t mind telling you, Diary, the Secret Ingredients. It was Liquid Paraffin from the medicine cupboard and surgical spirit & oil of cloves and that junket stuff Rennit I think it is called & lots of other things mostly oily all mixed together. I forget half of them.

  I put them in the medicine bottle I kept the acid from School Stinks Lab in a little bottle of its own because it is very dangerous. I still have a black place on my finger where I touched the cork. Wow! Some acid! & I put everything in my grotty little handbag I hate young girls carrying handbags but there you are I had to do it & I got on to the stage & I filled Lisa’s glass with my Elixir of Death & she drank it. She has not got taste buds, she could not taste the ghastly muck I mixed.

  Gosh what would have happened if someone else had drunk it but there you are fortune smiles on the brave I think I was superbrave and also very ingenious but a lot of thanks I get.

  And she died and I’m glad & I don’t care how horrible it all looked, her writhing about like that and then the rat thing. Just think how much worse if Lisa had WON and They would come and my parents would be taken away because they are too old poor darling Dad I was only teasing him about being saggy & baggy really he is not and even if he was I would love him still and Mother too. Everyone teases everyone, nobody ever says what they mean, it is a funny thing.

  But Timothy said a great thing the day after, he found me crying, I had had the bad dreams I keep getting the dream about Lisa on the stage, he called me Darling Beth, he said I had been Right all along he even hugged me & I know how he hates doing things like that, showing affection or anything, & he was crying too. He did not pretend he was not crying he did not even wipe away his tears he just kept saying ‘You did it, Beth!’ in a choked way & squeezed me which of course made me cry worse than ever because I was so pleased & he said in his American voice, ‘That’s right, baby, you gotta let it all hang out!’

  & then of course we started laughing & crying it was ridiculous.

  I am so glad it happened but I wish I could stop having that dream I am writing so much Diary because I am afraid of the dream but doubtless I will grow out of it like Tim says he came into my room last night in the middle of the night he put his hand on my head and I pretended to be sleeping but I was not. He kept his hand there a long time & all the time I felt better & perhaps the dream will go away.

  Why should I care anyhow she is dead dead DEAD that is all that matters. Anyhow what is there to be scared of, Timothy is only next door I can hear him typing.

  Tonight I will lie in bed imagining that I am being given a medal by the Queen or she is unveiling a statue of me or something stupid like that & everyone is cheering. Think of something cheerful then I will not get the dream.

  Letter from Nicholas Fisk to Timothy Carpenter

  … Is Beth really all right? Are you? I keep re-running my video cassette and thinking of more and more questions to ask you. We will meet soon, but please don’t stop writing to tell me more about that night; as you said, it was a Historic Occasion – the historic occasion, the salvation of Mankind! The world ought to go down on its knees to that sister of yours.

  Already Lisa Treadgold is beginning to slip sideways in my mind. My video cassettes tell me she was there, she existed, she was as beautiful and awful as she seemed. And yet nobody mentions her. Have you noticed that? No one says her name! The TV and newspapers are still full of stories about The Night – ‘Theatre Disaster, 3 Killed, 27 Seriously Injured’, etc., etc. (I’m catching your bad habits!) But of Lisa Treadgold – not a word. I suppose it’s like this at the Gazette – do Fanny Bishop and Len Sturgeon ever write anything about Lisa? I bet not.

  Of the Rollers, there’s hardly a trace. I came across one of those Roller boaters the other day. It had blown into a ditch. It still had its R.O.L. band round it. I stood staring at it, thinking how old it looked – how ancient, remote, like a snatch of blotched, jerky cine film about trench warfare. Yet it all happened only yesterday. And, yet again, I can write these words – which prove that I can and do remember. But the memory is faded, there’s no life in it. What did Lisa do to scramble our minds so completely?

  One thing is clear enough in my mind. I think I told you that I arranged to give the Rollers one third of my earnings, now and for the future. My Bank Manager tells me that Lisa may be dead – but the arrangement is very much alive! So it’s last laugh to Lisa. ‘Funny joke, ha ha,’ as you and Beth and Mac always say.

  Bless you all.

  About the Author

  Nicholas Fisk was born in London in 1923. Before becoming a full-time author, Nicholas served in the Royal Air Force during World War Two, then found work initially as an actor, cartoonist, and jazz musician before becoming an advertising copywriter, illustrator, photographer and writer. He has written more than fifty books, most of which are science fiction for older children. Nicholas’s book MONSTER MAKER was made into a TV film for The Jim Henson Hour in 1989.

  Nicholas’s starting point for a story is an IF … IF we had a domestic robot, IF we could talk to animals, IF we could move back and forth in time. On such premises he places people – recognisable people living ordinary lives – until the IF explodes.

  Nicholas retired as an author in 1998 and still lives in Hertfordshire.

  Sample Chapters

  This ebook contains sample chapters of the other books in our Summer Sci-fi promotion. These titles are on sale just for the month of August 2013. Buy them now from your favourite ebook retailer. Click on any of the titles below to jump to that sample.

  CLOCKWISE TO TITAN by Elon Dann

  Like prison-break movie THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION for young readers in a different reality, Mo, Harete and Moth are escaping the tyrannical forces of the Institute. They follow a line of pylons towards freedom, weaving together stories from their past, present and imaginations.

  STRAY by Monica Hesse

  Lona Sixteen Always is not herself - quite literally. She lives virtually through the experiences of Julian, a boy chosen as a role model for the Pathers of Quadrant 1 - troubled children who have been 'rescued' by the government and put 'on-Path'. But one day Lona finds she can think for herself.

  INSIGNIA by S J Kincaid

  Tom is suddenly recruited into the US Army to train as a virtual reality Combatant to see if he is good enough to help fight World War Three. Equipped with a new computer chip in his brain, it looks as if Tom might actually become somebody. But what happens when you start to question the rules?

  BOONIE by Richard Masson

  JD's father has been burnt alive by the Silver Men. His mother has run away. Lost in the desert without water, JD meets a strange old man whose mouth has been sewn shut. That man's secret will save his life.

  PORTAL 24 by Meredith Stroud (special early release due mid-August, no sample available)

  Before teen con-artist Darius has time to wonder why he's been chosen a top-secret experiment which sends teens back through time to prevent disasters, his first mission arrives in the form of a huge electromagnetic weapon of mass destruc
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  TRANSPARENT by Natalie Whipple

  Fiona has had to move to a new school and seems completely invisible to the boy she likes. So far so normal, right? But Fiona really is invisible. In a world where anti-radiation pills have caused genetic mutations, Fiona's mobster father will stop at nothing to get back the world's most effective thief.

  CLOCKWISE TO TITAN

  by Elon Dann

  Chapter 1

  Outside

  The Moth swayed on the top of the wall, delicately positioning his feet to avoid the tangled coils of barbed wire. He wobbled as he fumbled for a handhold on the metal bars.

  ‘Come on!’ I rasped up at him through the darkness. ‘They could catch us any second!’ We should have had hours to spare, but things were not going to plan. We’d barely scraped through one disaster, and now we were desperately late. Moth’s slowness was an agony. Was I going to have to steer him over every tree stump and hole in the ground for the entire week?

  ‘I’m doing my best; it’s not easy for me!’ he whimpered. Releasing his grip on the bars that supported the wire coils, he made a sudden backwards leap, springing away from the wall and dropping more than twice his height onto the soggy ground beside me. He landed heavily in the slippery mud, but remembered to buckle his legs as he did so. He stood up, clearly winded and a little shocked at his own rashness, and leant against the wall. He raised and waggled each foot at me in turn to prove that he had managed to avoid snapping an ankle.