‘You know what Stan’s like. Once he’s fired up, there’s no reasoning with him,’ moaned Spike. He had flattened himself against the wall to avoid pricking the visitors who were rushing around in all directions.
‘Stay back!’ cried Stan, who was now standing on top of the perspex box containing the sin extractor.
‘No! Wait! Crush isn’t back yet! We need something to keep the needle in!’ wailed Puff, but it was too late. With a manic expression on his big, red face, Stan held his fists together above his head, and then brought them down in a mighty hammer blow, smashing a hole in the plastic. Visitors screamed in response to the loud BANG and cowered as shards exploded in all directions.
Unfortunately, in his haste to get the job done, Stan had forgotten about the powerful magnetic pull of the sin extractor. The hole he had just created exposed him to the needles below, and now he was being pulled down towards them with tremendous force.
‘Aaaargh!’ roared Stan as his right arm was sucked through the hole up to his shoulder.
‘Quick! Take my hand!’ Miser reached out one of his long tentacles towards Stan. The other monsters instinctively took hold of Miser in an attempt to anchor him to the ground.
Stan groaned and reached out his left hand towards Miser’s tentacle. His right hand gripped one of the extractor needles.
‘Pull!’ said Miser, and the monsters pulled him with all their might. Stan gripped Miser’s tentacle, which began to stretch like a rubber band. Stan was now in the middle of a tug of war between the sin extractor and his five monster friends.
‘Pull harder!’ shouted Stan.
‘We’re trying!’ cried Spike.
Stan felt the needle in his right hand break loose from the sin extractor, and with all of his remaining strength he heaved his right arm back through the hole and flung the needle towards his fellow monsters. It spun across the floor like a wayward compass needle – and would have jammed itself straight into Nosh’s pink belly had it not been for the sudden return of Crush. Crush pounced on the needle, trapping it against the ground with a cuddly toy pigeon he had stolen from the gift shop. (Cuddly toys had already proven to be secure vessels to contain a sin-extractor needle and, apart from a toddler who clapped with delight at the sight of a toy pigeon flying very low to the ground, Crush had been successful in remaining unnoticed.)
‘HOOOONK!’ honked Crush, pointing at Stan.
I was not exaggerating when I said Stan had used all his remaining strength to pull the needle out: he really did have nothing left to give, which is why he was now being sucked back through the hole in the plastic cover.
‘Stan!’ cried Puff. ‘Don’t let go of Miser!’ But it was too late. Stan did not have the strength to hold on to Miser’s tentacle any longer, and he let go.
There was an awful squelching noise as Stan was sucked through the hole, followed by a loud hiss as his body fell across the needles.
‘No, Stan! Noooo!’ wailed Nosh.
‘HOOOOOONK!’ honked Crush.
The other monsters could not cry out, or even speak. They were stunned by the sight of Stan disintegrating on the bed of needles. The sin extractor shook as if it were hungrily consuming him, and only a few seconds later Stan had been completely sucked through the needles.
No, I’m not joking.
Stan really was gone.
UNCLE POGO AND THE SOGGY HOUSE
At the exact same moment as Stan disappeared from existence, Nelson felt a sudden attack of anxiety, and ran his bicycle straight into a skip outside Uncle Pogo’s house. There was a very loud clang of metal, but Nelson and his bicycle were unharmed.
Nelson was used to sharing his feelings with his monsters, no matter how far apart they were, but he had never experienced a feeling like this before. Feelings tended to creep up and linger, but this one had come and gone in seconds.
Weird.
Nelson shook his head and waited to feel something else, something that would make sense of that anxiety. The wind blew through the trees, a bird sang from a telephone line, and a car passed by, but Nelson didn’t receive any new feelings from his monsters. Assuming it must have been a false alarm, he gave a big sniff and leaned his bike against his uncle’s garden wall.
Uncle Pogo was a curious man.
And almost all the things he was curious about – from ancient tribal masks to transistor radios – were piled high in his tiny front garden. The garden was not the usual place to find all of his belongings, but since the basement floor of his house had been flooded in the night, this was to be the temporary resting place of his bizarre collection. The fussy neighbours were not pleased.
‘It’s a sign,’ said Doody, who was dragging a wet and ruined rug towards a rented skip when Nelson arrived at the house. ‘The universe is telling your uncle to get rid of some o’ this stuff. And he ruddy well better before he moves in with me!’ Doody laughed at his own joke. Sometimes when people do this it is annoying, but with Doody it was always infectious.
Nelson laughed when it suddenly struck him why he had been summoned: he was going to be asked to help tidy up the mess. Nelson’s heart sank. This was the last thing he wanted to do. He wanted to eat half a packet of biscuits and watch TV with his monsters, not start hauling wet junk up staircases.
‘So what happened?’ said Nelson, stepping over a pile of very old wooden skis.
‘Ah, it was the drains, dear boy, the d-r-r-r-rains!’ said Doody, rolling his rs. ‘Pipe under this house must have been blocked for a while without Pogo knowing, and then boom! Pipe burst, and it overflowed in the night.’
‘Nightmare,’ said Nelson.
‘Totally,’ said Doody. ‘And while Pogo’s fiddling around getting his false leg back on, I go and lift the cover off the main drain, and I find that stinky little stone in the middle of all this gunk blocking the pipe.’
Nelson gasped. Doody had no idea that what he was pointing at was not just a smelly stone, but a Bang Stone: a magical element that could transport you wherever you wanted to go. Nelson could hardly believe what he was seeing. While Doody continued to chatter and move things out to the skip, Nelson took a closer look at the little stone that was vibrating, bubbles fizzing and popping on its surface. He had swallowed that very stone twice before. Once when it was given to him by fish as means to escape from being trapped underwater, and the second time to get back home from Brazil. But he hadn’t come back home: he had arrived outside Pogo’s house in the midst of a terrible rainstorm, and right there, in the street where the skip now sat, Nelson had coughed up the stone and it had fallen into the street. The rain had been falling hard and washed the stone . . . down the drain. The very same drain that ran beneath Pogo’s house.
‘Smells ’orrible, dunnit? Like rotten eggs.’ Doody picked up the stone with gloved hands and tossed it into the skip.
Nelson looked at the skip, and felt a strong desire to jump in and rescue the stone.
‘Nelson! Hello! Look! We’ve been flooded!’ From the tone of his voice you would assume Uncle Pogo was delighted to see his home ruined. He was stomping out of the house wearing fly-fishing waders, a sweater from The Phantom of the Opera, and a sailor’s cap. There was no need for the cap; he just thought it went with the waders.
‘So you want me to help clear up, then?’ said Nelson, trying (but failing) to sound positive.
‘No, no, no! I’ve got something to show you! Wait right there.’
Nelson was relieved not be dragged into helping, and waited by the door while his uncle stomped into the house, and then stomped back out again, holding a small box.
‘What is it?’ said Nelson.
‘Rings,’ said Pogo excitedly, and he opened the box to reveal two silver rings.
‘Cool,’ said Nelson.
‘They’re our wedding rings. I realized we’d given your sister a role in the wedding as bridesmaid, and forgotten about you. So we thought it would be fun if you’d be our ring bearer. You know, give us the rings during the service?’
‘But what if I mess it up?’ Nelson already felt the pressure not to mess up.
‘You won’t mess it up. You just hang on to the rings before the service and pass them to us when the time comes.
‘Slightly scary, but OK.’
‘Ha ha. Thanks, Nelson.’
‘Fancy a cup o’ tea, you two?’ said Doody, walking over.
Uncle Pogo smiled. ‘Oh. That’d be perfect.’
‘Great. I’ll have two sugars in mine,’ said Doody.
‘Oh! You cheeky old git!’ said Pogo.
As they waited for the kettle to boil in the kitchen, Nelson and Uncle Pogo tucked into a packet of chocolate biscuits.
‘There’s a girl at my school, Katy Newman,’ Nelson began. ‘She’s putting on a play – Bugsy Malone—’
‘Oh, I love Bugsy Malone—’
‘Yeah, and she wanted to know if you could help make her some splurge guns.’
‘Look at your uncle’s face,’ said Doody, overhearing their conversation as he passed by with a box containing several pairs of Tibetan slippers, a Peruvian pan pipe and assorted martial arts weapons. ‘Splurge guns? O’ course he’s gonna make you some splurge guns. Look at him. You’ve made his ruddy day, you ’ave!’
Nelson laughed, and Uncle Pogo watched Doody leaving through the front door, whistling as he went.
‘Was it a bit of shock? You know, hearing about me and Doody wanting to get married?’ said Uncle Pogo as he poured the hot water into the teapot.
‘Uhhh. No. No. Well, a bit. Yeah I s’pose a bit. But I’m glad. We all are. It’s brilliant news, Uncle Pogo.’
Uncle Pogo’s eyes glistened. ‘You’ve no idea how much it means to hear you say that, Nelson.’
It made Nelson feel awkward to see an adult become emotional in front of him, so he distracted himself by shoving a biscuit into his mouth.
‘See, the thing is, you never know how much time you’re gonna have together,’ continued Pogo. ‘And time is so precious, Nelson, so you just gotta make the most of it. You really do.’
Nelson nodded thoughtfully. The time he had left with his own monsters might be coming to an end, and they couldn’t or, more to the point, shouldn’t waste a single second of it. They had to make the most of it. They couldn’t just end their time together being sad: they had to have some fun.
After a mug of very sweet tea and yet another chocolate cookie or biscuit, Nelson left Doody and Uncle Pogo heaving a roll of soggy carpet out of the basement, climbed into the skip and, after a bit of digging around, retrieved the Bang Stone. He wrapped it up in a plastic bag and stuffed it into his backpack. Nelson did not yet know exactly what he was going to do with the Bang Stone, but something in the back of his mind convinced him it could be used for something fun.
STAN 2.0
You are probably worried about what happened to Stan. Well this is what happened . . .
While Nelson had been talking with Doody and Pogo, a few miles away, inside the Museum of London, Stan had disintegrated, having been sucked into the sin extractor. It was his own fault for being hot-headed and not thinking about the consequences of his actions.
He had been reduced to his essence, which had then spilt from the base of the sin extractor into one of seven copper vials held underneath.
The visitors to the museum had left the room after the lights had gone out. Now the remaining six monsters watched with amazement as their angry red friend reappeared as vapour. At first, all that could be seen of him was steam rising from the copper vial. Then the vial shook, and toppled from the rack on to the floor.
‘Look . . . at . . . that . . .’ said Puff in awe.
‘Wowzers . . .’ exclaimed Hoot. ‘Did we all look like that when we were born?’
At first, Stan was no more than a wriggling red blob the size of a tennis ball, with a lump growing out of the top of him. He grew quickly, the lump stretching and peeling like a banana to reveal a purple horn beneath, angry eyes popping out of the red flesh beneath, just as that distinctive surly mouth appeared.
‘Honk!’ said Crush, who thought this newborn version of Stan was adorable.
The smell of burned fireworks filled the air as two little fists punched their way out of the sides of the red blob and two little hooves kicked out of the bottom.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Spike, who rarely experienced joy but was certainly feeling it now. ‘Look who it is! Little baby Stan.’
‘Who you callin’ a baby!? Eh?!’ snapped Stan, who was now standing on two legs, looking exactly like he did before, only less than half his original size.
The six monsters burst into hysterics – for Stan was not only smaller than before, his voice was high-pitched like a chipmunk.
‘What happened to me? What’s happened to my voice?! What’s going on?!’ Stan was only now realizing he was the same height as Crush.
‘Baby Stan! Dat is da funniest fing I ever see in my whole life!’ laughed Nosh.
‘Shut ya face, ya big pink blob!’ squeaked Stan, but this only made the monsters laugh even more. Miser took it upon himself to explain. ‘You went through the sin extractor and out the other side.’
‘What?’ said Stan, his eyes wide with shock.
Miser waved the toy pigeon at him impatiently.’I can explain in greater detail later, but we have what we came for and I suggest we leave at once.’
‘But I’m tiny! I’m flippin’ half the size I was before!’
‘You seem not to have lost any of your anger, though. In fact, it appears you are merely a concentrated version of your previous self,’ observed Miser.
The monsters roared with laughter, which made Stan stomp his little feet and growl like a lion.
‘I say we go . . . before he does a Rumpelstiltskin . . . and stomps a hole in the floor,’ said Puff, smirking.
‘Who you callin’ Rumpelstiltskin!?’ said Stan menacingly.
‘Well, I think you look pretty nifty that size,’ said Hoot to Stan as they ran back towards the museum exit.
‘Shut ya beak, ya feather-brain,’ snapped Stan.
On the bus ride back to Ivan’s house, the monsters realized that Stan 2.0 was not to be messed with. Even though he had succeeded in retrieving a sin-extractor needle, the reason they had come to the museum in the first place, Stan was more furious than any of the monsters had seen him before. Miser had been right: Stan really was a more concentrated version of himself – his skin redder, his horns a more vivid purple, his temper quicker, his frustration greater, his glare more intense.
THE WISH LIST
It was just after 6 p.m. when Nelson arrived at Ivan’s house. Ivan came out of the workshop to meet him and closed the door behind him.
They say they are very upset, signed Ivan, sighing worriedly.
I know, signed Nelson. So am I.
Ivan moved forward and gave Nelson a hug, patting his back in a firm and friendly way to avoid it feeling too sentimental. Ivan was good at reading people’s feelings and knowing just what they needed in that moment. Right then he knew Nelson was close to tears, but would have felt ashamed to cry in front of Ivan, so a brotherly hug was just the thing. Reassuring but not overwhelming.
I’m going to leave you all alone.
Thank you.
Ivan showed Nelson inside, where he found all seven of his monsters wearing gloves and sitting on the floor beside the wood burner, staring at the flames.
‘Stan?’ said Nelson in surprise. ‘What the heck happened to you?’
‘I don’t wanna talk about it, all right?!’ barked Stan, and he stormed off past Nelson to sit on the other side of the workshop.
‘He’s tiny! What did you do to him?’ asked Nelson of the other monsters.
Between them they told Nelson about their day; how they had sneaked into the museum to steal a sin-extractor needle; and how Stan had wound up passing through the device.
‘So the needle you stole is inside that?’ asked Nelson, pointing at the cuddly pigeon beside Cr
ush.
They all nodded in response.
‘And, what? I just stick that needle into my skin and you all go back inside me?’
They all nodded again.
Nelson still didn’t think he could let this happen. He wasn’t ready to let them go. But he decided to play along for the time being.
‘CAN WE JUST GET IT OVER WITH COS I CAN’T STAND THIS WAITIN’ AROUND!’ bellowed Stan from across the room. He had tears in his eyes, and his teeth were clenched.
‘No, we are not just going to “get it over with”. I was just at Uncle Pogo’s house, and he was saying this thing about how time is precious and you’ve got to make the most of it.’
‘Uncle Pogo’s right,’ said Puff with a sigh.
‘Exactly, so before you all go – you know, before we have to say goodbye to each other forever – let’s make the most of it; let’s have an absolutely wicked time,’ said Nelson, swinging his backpack from his shoulder and on to the floor.
‘What? Are we gonna have a party?’ Spike could not have sounded more sour. ‘Celebrate how rubbish it is that we have to leave?’
‘Nope!’ said Nelson cheerfully as he rummaged around in his backpack. ‘I had this idea on the way over. Each one of you gets to pick something you want to do. Absolutely anything in the whole world. Like a wish. And we do it. Whatever it is.’ Nelson pulled the Bang Stone out of the backpack.
‘Ooooooh!’ groaned Nosh at the smell of the stone.
‘A Bang Stone,’ whispered Miser, his fingers flexing as they reached out towards it.
‘I’d recognize that eggy stink from anywhere,’ moaned Spike.
‘I found it at my uncle’s house. It’s the same one I used to get home that time we saved my sister. Remember?’
They all nodded. How could they forget?
‘Well, we can go anywhere in the world with this. Anywhere! And you’re all invisible, and as long as I am too, we can do anything we want – right?’
‘Can you make me big again?’ growled Stan from the corner of the room.
The Curse of the Deadly 7 Page 4