The grey dust storm was gone and there was sunlight. From where she was squatting Frank saw the corner of the music computer, saw the edge of Nick’s mum’s elbow, and then … it flickered away with a crackle, like a needle dragged off an old record, and the dust was back, filled with those things with their glowing blue eyes and their hungry, thin bodies.
‘What on earth – !’ shouted Nick.
And the thing turned and fixed him with its eyes and reached out with one of its claw-like, stick-like arms and snatched him, big as he was, off the stairs and dangled him in the air.
Nick wriggled like a fish. Behind him, Frank (creeping a few steps lower for a better view) saw that the circle of clarity, that opening in the window, was getting bigger. Not big enough for the others to climb through yet, but not far off.
It wouldn’t be long before these things started coming out of the dust and into her world.
‘Get off me!’ Nick shouted, flailing out with his arms.
Big as he was though, he couldn’t reach the thing that held him up. Its companions, its fellow stick-folk in the dust chittered and clacked.
The thing turned and chittered back. Talking.
‘Nick,’ Frank hissed.
He twisted to look at her.
‘Frank,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry about all this. It’s my fault.’
He gestured with his arm at everything.
Frank was amazed.
Here he was, hanging upside down in the claw of some monster, with a portal to another world opening behind him, and he was apologising to her.
‘What an idiot,’ her stomach said.
She took a deep breath and, ignoring that voice inside her, said, ‘Nick. It’s opening the window. Opening it like a door. It’s going to let all its … friends through. That’s not good.’
‘No,’ Nick agreed. (How calm he was, how calm he seemed!) ‘I don’t like the look of them very much. And although you shouldn’t judge books by their covers …’ He left the end of the sentence dangling, like he was.
As ridiculous as the situation was, she smiled. He wasn’t afraid. Or if he was afraid he wasn’t letting her see it. Her heart pulsed with feeling for him.
Here they were, very possibly at the end of the world, and he was making jokes.
The stick-creature was ignoring them. Although it held a tight grip around Nick’s ankle, it wasn’t looking at them: it was talking to the other world; it was watching the circle of clarity, the way in, the door grow slowly wider. (One of its companions was poking a blank face through, its slit-mouth opening to taste the air of the cellar.)
They were no threat to it.
‘Agent Jofolofski gave me a thing,’ Frank said. ‘A thing to close the window.’
‘Then use it.’
‘For good,’ Frank said. ‘It’ll close the window for good.’
‘Do it.’
For a fraction of a second the shushling drone of the dust storm became a melody and the grey light of the scarecrow-world sparkled with sunlight as the machine on the tripod groaned and sparked … but then it was back.
‘I can’t,’ Frank said. ‘If the window cl–’
‘I know,’ he said, cutting her off.
And that was it. Nick had spoken.
He understood.
He began struggling again in the thing’s grip, trying to wriggle free or, Frank realised, to distract it while she did what she had to do.
Frank pulled the heavy metal disc from the pocket of her jeans. It didn’t look anything special. There were no buttons or dials to fiddle with. Just a peeling paper label: Govt Issue Coagulant Charge Mk III (medium) – £50 fine for Misuse.
‘Put it down and get out of the way before the leechway appears,’ Agent Jofolofski had said. It was open now, wide open and getting wider. She just had to throw it. That would work, wouldn’t it?
She was a rubbish thrower, but it was only a few metres away, and she was halfway up the stairs. It would be easy.
Underarm.
Just a gentle lob up in the air and it would land in the middle of that dust cloud, a dust cloud filled, thronged, packed with stick-men and stick-women, all clacking and chittering, all waving their many arms urgently, black and shadowy, sharp and scary. Blue-eyed. Pale-faced. Hungry.
‘Get on with it,’ her stomach said.
And she threw the charge.
A metal disc, about the size of a digestive biscuit, but somewhat heavier, span, end over end, through the air towards the mouth of another world …
… and was snatched from the air by a narrow, pincer-like, twig-like hand.
Nick fell to the floor with a crash.
The slit-mouthed face twisted on its stiff neck to look at what it had caught. It seemed to read the label carefully before turning to peer directly into Frank’s soul.
She trembled, shivered, panicked and tried to scurry back up the stairs.
All was lost. The stick-creature stabbed a long arm between the banisters and grabbed her ankle. It tugged and Frank fell, banging her grazed knee on the step. She yelped, without meaning to.
She scrabbled with her fingernails on the bare wood of the stairs, but was dragged backwards until her foot was pulled tight against the banister. Then, with a sharp tug, she was yanked into the air.
And there she dangled, held like Nick had been.
She saw him on the floor below her, crawling away, staggering to his feet.
Dozens of blue lights peered at her from that swirling grey land of dust. They seemed as curious as the thing that held her.
‘Chitter, chitter, chitter,’ they said.
She was swung round, wriggling, to face her captor, loose change slipping out of her pockets and tinkling to the ground. Her top was falling down (or maybe up – towards her face at any rate) and she was keeping it in place with one hand while reaching out with the other for the disc-shaped charge in the creature’s stick-fingered claw.
She couldn’t reach.
Shadows curled around the walls. Frank heard clicking footsteps and saw that one of the stick-people had climbed into the cellar. Another one had its leg hooked out of the window and was ducking to slip its head through too.
The circular opening was just wide enough now.
‘Mum!’
It was Nick’s voice.
Frank twisted and caught a glimpse of him standing at the foot of the stairs.
He was looking at Frank, looking at the thing holding her, looking at the mechanical apparatus on the tripod that hummed softly as it somehow forced open the hole.
‘Mum!’ he shouted again.
It was as if he wanted her to hear him, wanted her to look at him. But she was in another world, one that was no longer touching this one.
‘She can’t hear you,’ Frank said, almost to herself.
But it had been enough to get the stick-creature holding her to look his way.
It seemed puzzled, and it chittered at its companion who stood beside it.
‘Now, Frank,’ Nick said.
And she looked and saw that the thing’s clawed hand was lowered, was idling in the air, and she wriggled and grabbed at it, gripping the wrist with one hand and wrapping her other hand round the metal disc.
She snatched and it came free.
With a spitting noise the stick-creature let her fall before she could throw it and she hit the ground with a hard crump. And then the rising, whistling sound of the grey dust-wind once again merged into music, and Frank knew, without looking round, that the window had shifted back again, that Nick’s mum was back.
The box on the tripod groaned, whistled, sparked.
Something black and withered like a burnt log fell to the ground beside her. It was the leg, or most of the leg, of the stick-creature that had been climbing out of the opening when the worlds had swapped.
She heard angry hissing voices and thundering footsteps and a noise like an impact, and she rolled on to her back, looked up just in time to see the mountain
ous shape of Nick slam into the first stick-creature, the one from the park, and propel it forward, both of them hurtling through the glowing circle and into Nick’s mum’s studio.
They rolled together on the floor and Frank saw the troll woman get up from her instrument and step towards them. The stick-creature looked so thin and frail, so raggedy compared to her, Frank almost wondered what she’d ever been afraid of.
She could see Nick’s mum’s studio more clearly through the open window – it was a summer house and green gardens were visible through a doorway at one side – and she watched helplessly as Nick and the stick-creature rolled and wrestled across the floor.
(Did she dare jump through the open window herself? How could she help?)
Nick’s mum reached down and, with surprisingly delicate fingers, lifted the stick-thing up into the air and peered at it. With the other hand she pulled Nick to his feet.
Without letting go of the creature, but holding it out to one side, she turned to look at Nick. Her eyes were wet and her cave-like mouth quivered.
Nick stepped forward. As tall as he was, she towered over him.
As they embraced – his arms timidly touching her waist, one of her hands covering his back, the other hand dangling the wriggling stick-creature off to one side – the scene began to fade.
Frank saw that there was a shimmering darkness glowing in Nick’s hand, like a candle flame but the opposite, in negative.
She looked down at her hand. It was empty; the floor around her was empty. Nick had snatched up the metal disc, Agent Jofolofski’s coagulant charge, and taken it with him through the doorway-in-the-window.
‘Nick!’ she shouted. ‘Quick! Come back.’
As the darkness grew around him, his mum looked up, looked at Frank through the open space of the orange-rimmed window, heard her shouting. She let go of Nick.
‘Nick!’ Frank shouted again.
Her heart was banging. The flame of darkness surrounding the disc was growing. It was getting hard to see.
She scuttled to the stairs, where they’d sat and watched the other world through the window together. She’d be safe there, far enough away from the closing, overlapping worlds.
She looked back and saw Nick’s mum kneeling down beside him. She gently bumped her huge forehead against his, touched his hand where the dark spark flared, and pushed him.
‘Nick,’ Frank yelled, ‘get out of –’
But her sentence was cut off as darkness engulfed the whole scene, obliterated the window, vanished Nick’s mum’s world back into elsewhere with a great crashing noise that sounded like boxes falling over.
Then the darkness faded and faint sunlight poured in from above.
The connection was shut, severed, done. For good.
There was a sound like a coin spinning on tiles, but duller and heavier, which slowed and fell to silence with a solid thunk.
The cellar was just a cellar again, filled with the things that end up in cellars and attics the world over. Boxes and forgotten toys and furniture.
And dust.
The hard floor was covered with a grey dust that smelt of far-off deserts.
And in the middle of it was the burnt-out shape of the metal disc Nick had taken with him into his mother’s world.
The machine on the tripod whined, whirred, coughed, sparked and finally rumbled to a halt, and the scarecrow-like thing, the one that had stepped through the door and was new to this world, stood and stared at the place where the window had been. It too had been beyond the window’s reach when it had been sealed shut.
Its shoulders hunched. The glowing blue eyes didn’t dim, but flickered. It chittered a few short words, then stood silent.
It didn’t seem to know what to do now.
Frank edged away into the corner of the stairs. The hard wall against her back was good. Solid.
Nick had gone.
Nick had gone.
She couldn’t believe it.
‘Believe it,’ her stomach said. ‘The idiot went and did it.’
The doorbell rang upstairs.
She glanced at the stick-person, but it wasn’t moving.
She pulled herself to her feet and climbed the stairs, feeling nothing.
There was knocking at the door now, as well as ringing.
As Frank went into the hallway she looked at the shadow-patch by the kitchen door. She had hoped that the shadows would release Mr Underbridge when the thing that had commanded them was gone from the world. But they hadn’t.
She felt sick.
What had just happened was catching up with her.
Nevertheless, she pulled herself up to her full height, wiped some dust off her cheeks and opened the front door.
On the other side was Special Agent Jofolofski.
‘Look, I got this through extra quick.’ She waved a bit of paper. ‘You’re going to have to –’
She stopped when she saw it wasn’t Mr Underbridge.
‘Ms Patel,’ she said coolly. ‘You’re here. I didn’t expect that.’
‘It’s done,’ Frank said.
Special Agent Jofolofski nodded.
‘Well done,’ she said. ‘I know how hard this must’ve been for you –’
‘It’s done,’ Frank said. ‘But it’s not over. I need your help.’
She stood back to let the agent in and pointed towards Mr Underbridge.
Looking around as she walked, sniffing the air and stepping carefully, Agent Jofolofski made her way over to the corner and examined the shadow.
It shifted like the shadow of a swimmer at the bottom of a sunlit pool.
‘Ms Patel,’ she said. ‘Hold this for me.’
She gave Frank her briefcase and snapped open the catches. Lifted the lid. Pulled out an aerosol canister. Gave it a shake.
‘They’re just nuisances, these things,’ she said, as she sprayed the can at the wall. ‘Mostly harmless. They usually fade away soon enough, unless someone finds them first.’
The shadows shrivelled up as she sprayed them and Mr Underbridge fell to the hall floor, choking and coughing on the fumes.
He was pale and shaking. He looked cold, his fingers blue, as though he’d been trapped under the ice. Like Neil his hair had turned white, although it had been going that way already, and his clothes were faded.
‘Frank,’ he croaked, looking up. ‘And … you?’
Special Agent Jofolofski knelt down and put her arm round him.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ she said.
‘Where’s Nick? Has he come back yet?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking up at Frank.
‘The troll-boy’s gone,’ her stomach said.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Frank said. And then she remembered. ‘There’s a thing in the cellar.’
But when Special Agent Jofolofski tiptoed down the stairs all there was was mid-afternoon sunlight from the high windows and a smooth covering of thick dust everywhere. She scooped some of it into a little plastic bag and put the burnt-out disc back in her briefcase.
Frank described what the thing had looked like as best as she could.
Jofolofski listened closely, nodded and picked up the stick-like leg that had been left behind.
‘But where’s Nick?’ Mr Underbridge said, still shaky, still unsure of what had happened.
How could Frank tell him? What exactly could Frank say? That Nick had been the hero who’d stopped a … what? An invasion? Or that he’d gone back to his mum? Would that make his dad feel better? She didn’t know. Words failed to find her mouth and she just stood there.
‘Perhaps we should put the kettle on,’ Jofolofski said, seeing Frank’s face. ‘I think we need a cup of tea.’
But then there was a noise as boxes of junk fell in the corner of the cellar and a great shape lurched out from under them.
‘Nick?’ Mr Underbridge said.
‘Hi, Dad,’ said Nick, sounding strangely sheepish. ‘I’m … I’m sorry.’
His dad ignored the
apology, not needing it, and hobbled over to hug his son.
Frank stared.
‘I thought he was gone?’ her stomach said.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I thought so too, but he’s not. He’s still here.’
Upstairs Frank and Nick sat with the two grownups and tried to explain exactly what had happened.
‘When the thing went off,’ Nick said, meaning the disc that closed the window, ‘she pushed me out of the way. Quite a shove. She sent me flying into the cellar, into those boxes. I don’t think she knew her own strength.’
‘She sent you home,’ Frank said.
‘I guess so,’ he replied, with a strange mixed look on his face.
Once they’d finished answering questions, Special Agent Jofolofski turned to Frank and said, ‘Thank you for your courage and for your help, Ms Patel.’
‘But I didn’t do anything,’ Frank said. ‘It was Nick who did it.’
‘No,’ Nick said, shaking his head. ‘That’s not it at all.’
‘Team effort?’ offered his dad.
‘Not even that,’ said Nick. ‘Not exactly.’
Special Agent Jofolofski shook her head.
‘Let’s not worry too much about where to lay the praise. Let me just say that His Majesty will be most grateful to both of you for your cooperation and assistance in this matter. It is also my duty to inform you that you are bound to silence about what has happened here this afternoon and on all concomitant subjects, observations and phenomena. There are forms you are obliged to sign, the Unofficial Secrets Act and so on.’
When Frank walked in the back door an hour later, her dad turned from the fish pie he’d just pulled out of the oven and said, ‘Aha! Darling, you’re just in time!’
‘That smells nice,’ she said.
‘Thank you. I made it myself.’
She picked the cardboard packet up off the side and read, ‘“Fifty minutes at gas mark –”’
‘And how was your afternoon,’ her dad interrupted. ‘D0 anything fun?’
‘Well …’ she said, thinking about it. ‘We just watched TV for a bit and played some more Swingball. That’s all.’
The Song From Somewhere Else Page 12