by Steve Cole
“I climbed out.” Bosstradamus’s revolting bulk quivered with monstrous laughter. “It took me fifteen hundred years . . . eating nothing but slime and rocks and mud to survive . . . but I climbed out. And found myself here, in the vault of the Star Jewel.” She hissed. “How the mystical stench of that crystal taunted me in the depths of the pit . . . how it teased and tantalised . . . how I for its magical might.”
Alfie turned to me and gulped. “Do you think she wanted it much?”
“But it was no use to you, monsters can’t use it.” I couldn’t keep the shake from my voice. “So you needed a human to work it for you. You needed me. But that’s not all, is it? You needed my house.”
Verity, Alfie and Zola looked at me. “Your house?”
“It wasn’t an accident, the way my whole house was pulled down here by the eerinium, was it?” I said boldly. “You used whatever weirdo powers you still have to make it happen!”
“So.” Bosstradamus smiled nastily. “Bob has worked it out at last.”
I turned from her, facing my friends. “The crystal grants my heart’s desire, right? To put my house right back where it came from . . . but, unknown to me, with Bosstradamus hiding on board.”
Verity squeaked. “Of course! She can hitch a lift inside this house back to the human world.”
“And pick up where she left off in Merlin and Arthur’s time,” I concluded. “Causing bother and evil and stuff.”
“Bravo,” Bosstradamus breathed.
“Well . . . you can forget it.” I bunched my fists, swallowed hard and tried to act tough. “Cos, I – I’m not going to take you anywhere.”
“Really?” Bosstradamus growled. “Then my friends and I had better come out.”
Uh-oh, I thought. “Your . . . friends?”
“Listen!” Verity sniffed the air, pricked her ears.
The stealthy scrabbling noises I’d heard before had returned.
“Where are they coming from?” I hissed.
Zola pointed at the nearest wall, riveted.
“What is it?” Alfie twittered.
“I think . . . it’s ” Zola gasped, and I groaned. “Bob, I am loving the paint on the walls!”
“I am not loving the creepy noises behind the paint on the walls.” Verity was looking all about. The scratching, scurrying sounds were getting louder. My stomach lurched to see the walls around me were starting to bulge. The floor tiles were rippling. The ceiling was beginning to flake overhead as a scary scratching started up.
“I never planned to return to the world of humans alone, Bob,” Bosstradamus rumbled. “I invited a few hundred evil close friends to join the party. Have you heard of the Trojan Horse1? I have created the Trojan House!”
The kitchen walls burst open as creepy, scaly, utterly repulsive monsters came crawling into sight. Or oozing into sight. Or hobbling into sight. Or dragging themselves into sight by their eyeballs.
Zola pulled off her shades and glared hard at the horrific horde.
“Don’t look at the gorgon!” Bosstradamus commanded, but too late for most, who were transformed into cardboard cutouts.
“Thanks, Zola,” said Alfie bravely, whacking one two-dimensional monster away. “Now they’re pushovers!”
Bosstradamus roared and made a grab for me – I just barely ducked in time. “Out of here!” I yelled, legging it past the sinister standees and out into the hall. But here too – – revolting monsters were clawing their way through the floor and walls. A swiping, nine-fingered claw sent me staggering back into the downstairs loo – where a glowing jellyfish with eyes was rising from the toilet bowl. Yelling with horror, I turned and saw more incredible monsters uncoiling and wriggling and squeezing out from the dark spaces beneath the living-room floor.
The hall radiator was forced from the wall by the cackling monsters hiding behind it; the stupid thing smashed into my legs and sent me staggering into the dining room. Suddenly I was surrounded by evil-looking demons pounding their way through the plaster, ripping through the rug, reaching for me, clawing for me . . .
A two-headed monster lunged for my neck with clawed hands. I ducked and backed away, straight into some kind of revolting ant-creature with dripping, waxy skin . . .
It didn’t move – and I realised that all the monsters around me had been turned into wax.
I looked up, in a state of shock, to find Zola in the dining-room doorway, dark glasses back in place but composure lost. The monsters in the hall behind her were standing still in leering, twisted aspects. “I don’t know to call this still life.”
“How about Scared Stiff?” said Alfie, trampling over the waxy mass of invading monsters and dragging me out.
The way through the front door was blocked by a towering, one-eyed yellow glob and a round orange thing covered in spikes. Verity whirled into action, high-kicking them out of the way, ninja-hamster style. “Oh my nibbly goodness,” she panted. “These things are everywhere!”
“Too many,” Zola groaned, as Alfie threw open the front door. “I can’t transform them all.”
The ‘five-minute freeze’ of Zola’s glare had gone down to barely thirty seconds. The still lifes around us were already twitching back into their normal forms. Zola stared round at them all again, froze them back into place – but her snakes were looking sickly, and she had to lean against Alfie.
Next moment – – the kitchen door was pulverised as Bosstradamus smashed through it. Verity quickly shooed Alfie and Zola outside. But I lingered, transfixed with fear, in the doorway.
“If only you’d done as Verity or ‘Rachel’ asked you, boy, and simply wished us all away.” Bosstradamus tutted sadly. “I would have killed you swiftly to say thank you – before slowly destroying every other human on Earth.”
How sweet, I thought.
“But now, we’ll have to do things the hard way.” The three eyes of Bosstradamus blazed fierily. “There’s nowhere to run, boy.”
Obviously, I wasn’t about to accept that. I fled after Alfie, Zola and Verity out into Mother Poison’s cavern, leaving my shattered house and shattered dreams behind me.
“You will take us all to the human world, Bob!” Bosstradamus screamed after us. “By the time I’ve finished with you and your friends, you will be me to let you take us . . .”
With a chill of despair, I knew she was right. Running would do no good. It would only delay the inevitable. We were outnumbered by several-hundred-to-four. We were stuck at the bottom of an underground Niagara with nowhere to run. And, weakened by her ordeals, it seemed Zola had already overstrained her snakes just by getting us out of the house.
“We’re doomed,” I panted.
“I’m bound with the doom,” said Alfie (inevitably).
“Of course, you in particular, Bob, are extra-specially doomed,” said Verity sadly. “And so is the entire human race. Doomed, doomed, doomed. Oh! Those poor little humans . . . Doomed!”
“Well, thanks for the pep talk.” As we ran past, I noticed Mother Poison’s body on the ground behind some crags. “In here,” I hissed, “let’s take cover. Alfie, maybe the old boot can help us.”
“As a human shield?” Alfie suggested.
“Who is she?” wondered Verity.
I tried to shake Mother P awake – but she faded to smoking dust.
Verity gulped. “I mean, who was she?”
“Mother Poison,” I said, my stomach turning. “I don’t get it, she was breathing just now, how could she just disappear . . . ?”
“Forget it, man,” said Alfie.
“It’s all over,” Zola said sadly. “Look!”
Peeping over the crags, I gazed back the way we’d come. I heard the scuffle and scrape of monstrous claws crossing the cavern and caught the ominous dance of shadows as Bosstradamus’s forces approached.
“No.” Verity put a paw on my shoulder. “She means, look the other way.”
I did so – to find a soggy, sour-faced Captain Killgrotty and his greenie goon squad st
amping into the cavern on their bundle of little legs. He looked madly angry.
Even so, hope leaped in my chest like an enthusiastic but badly-coordinated goat. Here was a captain in the Monster Army, a creature who cared for the welfare of monsters. He’d want to sort out a situation like this, wouldn’t he?
He pulled out the weird-looking goggly binoculars he’d used when he first met me and trained them on Verity. “The zooloob scanner shows she’s clear,” he snarled. Then his three eyes narrowed as they fixed on me. “”
“Captain Killgrotty!” I fell to my knees and put my hands together, begging for mercy. “Please! Please, listen. There’s about a million evil monsters chasing after us, and they’re led by—”
“Bosstradamus.” His snarl bulldozered over my words. “I know. Who’d you think I was talking to, dangling beneath your copter? ‘You’ll bring disaster down on us all,’ I said. ‘You landed yourself here, and you’ll never get out,’ I said. ‘Let the fluff-ball go,’ I said.”
I gulped. “Um, I thought you were talking to me.”
Killgrotty waved his weird binoculars. “I knew that fur-brained Verity was being controlled by a zooloob. And I knew Bosstradamus would be behind it. I knew she was trying to lure you down here to use the Star Jewel for her mad, evil schemes.” He glared at Alfie. “So, before you shook me loose, I stuck a bug on your copter.”
Alfie stiffened. “That’s cruelty to bugs, man.”
“A tracer, I mean, so I could follow you wherever you went.” Killgrotty smiled grimly at his bedraggled guards. “And that’s just what we’ve done, right, boys? All the way here.”
His guards grumbled and nodded.
I could hear the clawing, slopping, clopping clatter of monster paws and feet coming closer – the sound of Bosstradamus’s forces, recovered and in pursuit. “So you’ll stop her, then?” I pleaded. “You’ll stop Bosstradamus destroying the human world?”
“Sure, I will. There’s one very simple way of stopping her. By eliminating the one person who can work that stupid Star Jewel . . .” Killgrotty pulled out his gun and aimed it straight at me. “By eliminating .”
“Um . . .” I stared down the barrel of Killgrotty’s gun. “When I asked for help, this isn’t quite what I had in mind.”
“You can’t do it!” Verity squealed, and threw herself at Killgrotty. But his guards grabbed her, held her back. Zola tried to glare at Killgrotty, but another guard gripped her head-snakes in his big green hand and squeezed, forcing her to her knees.
“Leave us alone, man!” Alfie whumped the guard with his big pincer, but another greenie took his little claw and twisted hard. Alfie was out of action.
“That’s enough, small-fry,” Killgrotty snapped. “We have to do this. With human-boy out of the way, Bosstradamus and her rabble have no way out. There’s nothing they can do.”
“Er . . .” Verity gulped and pointed with her nose. “Did you tell them that?”
I peered out from behind the crags to see a seething, surging mass of creatures crawling and pouring from the cavern shadows. My heart pounded like Frankenstein’s monster falling down a flight of stairs. I turned away, and found the gun-barrel jammed up against my nose.
The cold metal tickled my nostrils.
And suddenly – I SNEEZED.
“” Killgrotty’s guards shrieked and jumped backwards.
Verity was free again. She winked at me and hollered,
“” Alfie pretended he’d been hit in the eye and fell forward. “It burns! Nooooooo...”
Killgrotty stared at me, wide-eyed with fear. Going cross-eyed, I realised a couple of gloopy snot-strands were hanging from my nostrils.
And it seemed Killgrotty’s greenies were no match for mine. “” wailed the guard holding Zola, bursting into tears. Another of Killgrotty’s gang wet his pants. Yet another wet the pants of another guard standing several metres away.
I would have cheered, but, unbidden, another sneeze was coming – a real, riotous roar of one.
I aimed this one at the heaving horde of horrors charging our way. It froze those at the front of the pack almost as well as Zola’s gorgon-glare – which meant they were quickly trampled by the monsters coming up behind, who couldn’t stop in time.
Keen to cash in on my success, I faked another couple of noisy sneezes – though I well knew from monster movies that sequels were rarely as good as the originals. Even so, a lot of Bosstradamus’s monsters cringed and backed away, while one of Killgrotty’s guards turned and bolted. In fact, he led a minor charge, as the rest of the greenies legged it after him.
“Come back, you scum!” Killgrotty bawled after them.
And while he was distracted, Zola’s head snakes lashed out and bit his wrist. “Ow!” he yelped, and dropped the gun. Verity caught it neatly, rolled over behind the crags, then jumped in and out of cover, firing blasts of red energy into the oncoming swarm of monsters. They hopped and dodged and dived for cover, as the sizzling splats of energy zwooshed about them.
“Oi! Not so fast!” Killgrotty snarled, lunging for the weapon.
As he did so, Alfie grabbed hold of his neck with his little pincer. I winced – what chance did he have? Except Killgrotty suddenly collapsed, slumping groggily to his knees, his eyes flickering shut.
“Squeezed his bethemma nerve,” Alfie explained happily. “A delicate touch is all you need for a knockout.”
“And a blaster!” Verity squealed, zapping blast after blast into the scattering monster crowd.
We’re going to win, I found myself thinking. We’re actually going to make it out of this!
“No,” Killgrotty grunted. “I meant . . . don’t fire so fast . . . Power almost . . . out . . .”
And then so was he, already snoring as he struck the ground.
Zola, Alfie and I turned to Verity. “Stop!” we hissed, trying to grab the gun off her. “Stop firing!”
“Huh? When I’ve got them on the run?” She fired one more blast – but the sizzle had become a fizzle that could hardly zap a mouse, let alone a monster. “Uh-oh.”
Zola raised her head over the crags. “Er, let that be a lesson to you!” she yelled at the crowding creeps. “Kindly go home.” Then she lowered her voice. “Do you think they’ll listen?”
“” Bosstradamus herself had lumbered outside on her thick, veiny legs, swinging her brutish face this way and that. “.”
Alfie winced. “I don’t think they’re going to listen to you, Zoles.”
“Maybe this’ll shake them up,” I murmured, and jumped up into sight.
I bellowed, as explosively as I could.
Many of the monsters recoiled, but Bosstradamus only sneered. “He cannot harm you,” she told her followers. “That is simply a sneeze… The human equivalent of a friction gloop.”
“” came a great murmur of understanding from her murderous monsters – one that was shared by Zola, Alfie and Verity.
“I did wonder whether it might be a friction gloop,” Alfie admitted.
“Shut up!” I hissed. “Bosstradamus just gave away that I’m harmless, our only gun has run out of power, Killgrotty’s out cold and his greenies have scattered. What can we do?”
Alfie considered. “Cry and then soil ourselves?”
“” Bosstradamus rasped. “You know there’s no way out, boy. Say goodbye to your pathetic little pals, and then come out here and face your destiny.”
“If I do,” I called, “will you let Verity, Alfie and Zola go?”
“Um, yes. Of course.” Bosstradamus sniggered. “I definitely won’t stomp them into mush and feed them to my army before we leave.”
Alfie slapped both pincers to his forehead. “She’s totally going to stomp us into mush and feed us to her army before she leaves, isn’t she?”
“Uh-huh,” chorused Zola and Verity.
“Could you maybe give me five or six hours for the goodbye part?” I called again.
“You’ve got two minutes,” Bosstradamus shot back. “De
lay any longer and your friends will suffer .”
“As an artist, I rather hoped I’d be famous in my own lifetime.” Zola was close to tears. “But since I don’t have enough stare power to stop all those monsters . . .”
“There’s only one thing for it.” Verity looked sadly at Zola. “If this is the end . . . can you turn us all into something that won’t feel pain?”
“No!” I felt my throat tighten. “It can’t finish like this.”
“Well, for you, it won’t, man!” Alfie forced a cheery tone. “You’ll be kept alive long enough to take Bosstradamus and her hordes into your world so they can run amok and destroy millions of humans in a futile act of revenge against a long-dead wizard.”
“Oh, yeah, right. So it’s not all bad then.” I gave Zola an encouraging smile. “Can’t you turn us into balloons so we float out of here and take you with us?”
“My creative batteries are drained.” Zola batted a limp-headed snake. “I don’t know how long you’d stay transformed, but it wouldn’t be long enough to get back up the waterfall.”
Verity washed her paws anxiously. “And even if we did, we’d just be washed straight down again.”
“And besides, I’ve told you,” Zola went on, “I’ve never transformed a human before. Who knows what might happen?”
“But there’s got to be something we can do,” I insisted. “I’ve seen so many monster movies where the good guys were holed up someplace, surrounded by creepy critters. No matter how tight the scrape, however terrible the villains, in around 94% of cases they get out in the end.”
“This isn’t a movie, man,” Alfie reminded me.
“I wish it was,” squeaked Verity.
“Perhaps it can be. Sort of.” I looked at Zola. “You’re an amazing artist. Can’t you imagine really terrifying monsters – scary enough to scatter that army?”
“Scary,” came an echo on the air. It sounded like Mother Poison but, no, she was only dust now. I had to concentrate on what was real: like, the deadly danger we were in.
“Good idea, Bob-ob-ob,” said Verity. “Zola could work us like puppets! Super-creepy monsters like the Chopper and the Crudzilla sisters—”