‘Never mind that,’ whispered Doody. ‘Pogo, look. Look what’s behind that floating bloke. What the heck is that doing here?’
Doody was pointing to the sin extractor. It was positioned just behind Jim, and though the metal legs were crooked and blackened from smoke, there was no mistaking the bed of needles. Doody and Pogo looked at each other in disbelief.
‘I know he’s here,’ said Jim as his monster carried him in the air above the cowering guests.
Celeste scanned the dust and rubble for signs of her brother. Ivan was doing the same thing, while both her parents were still crouched on the floor.
‘Now, for the last time,’ said Jim, ‘where is Nelson Green?’
‘HOOOOOOONK!’
Jim spun around just in time to see monster Nelson shooting forward on his yellow wings before snatching him out of the air. The guests only saw Jim Tindle screaming as he flew over their heads and straight up the staircase leading to the main hall.
‘GET HIM!’ roared Jim’s monsters, and they chased Nelson through the party, knocking guests and rubble out of their way as they passed. Jim’s sleepy purple monsters weaved slowly in and out of the panicked guests, letting off great clouds of purple sleeping gas. As the guests fell, one by one, into a deep sleep, Nelson gripped the greasy Jim Tindle so hard that Jim could barely breathe, flapping his wings and carrying them higher and higher until they were close to the top of the inside of the dome. Below, the visitors ran for the exit. No one could see the monsters, but everyone could see the terrifying destruction they were causing.
‘What the heck are you?’ wheezed Jim.
Nelson felt his lips shrink from a trumpet into a mouth shape, and words were formed.
‘My monsters warned you. You should have stayed away from us.’
‘Your monsters? I don’t believe it . . . You’re Nelson Green?’
‘If I drop you, you’re dead.’
‘Oh my God, it is you! Well, you’ve changed in the last few days, eh!?’ cried Jim with a giddy and sarcastic laugh. ‘Still an annoying little git underneath it all, though!’
Nelson pulled Jim up close to his face with one of his four hands. ‘Why wouldn’t you leave us alone?’ he growled.
‘All you had to do was admit to the truth! That you started that fire at Heathrow!’ said Jim.
‘We didn’t start this.’
‘I lost my job because of you!’
‘You attacked my family and you’ve totally ruined my uncle’s wedding,’ said Nelson through large, gritted teeth. His anger was now so intense that it made his horns twist like corkscrews.
‘And you ruined my life, so go ahead! Drop me! Go on! Whatever you do, it doesn’t matter, cos I’ve got my own monster army and they are gonna kill you, Nelson Green!’
BLAM!
Nelson was hit right between the shoulder blades by one of Jim’s bird monsters, and Jim fell from his grasp. A swarm of bird monsters caught him, and another attacked Nelson in mid-air, pecking and clawing at him as he fell towards the cathedral floor. It was like watching some very ugly eagles play with their food before they kill it.
Nelson’s mighty red fists swelled and swiped the air, smashing beaks and sending feathers flying, before he landed on the edge of the Whispering Gallery with a tremendous crash! The stone barrier collapsed; Nelson had nothing to hold on to, and fell through the air and on to the cathedral floor. The pain of hitting the stone was so intense that his cry shattered all the stained-glass windows. And as the glass rained down on to the floor of the cathedral, Jim’s monsters pounced on Nelson. Their combined weight was suffocating, and their blows and bites were blindingly painful. Nelson shook his head in an attempt to push the monsters off with his horns, but every time he knocked one monster away, another took its place.
Jim hugged his own chest. He was cold, and badly cut across the shoulders by Nelson’s claws. He craved the happiness he felt from lying on the sin extractor, but that would have to wait until his monsters had killed Nelson Green, which by the looks of it would be fairly soon.
Nelson fought bravely and with tremendous strength, but he was no match for Jim’s army. What they lacked in strength and ability, they more than made up for in numbers. No matter how hard Nelson kicked them, how fiercely he slapped them away, pummelled them with his fists, rammed them with his horns and throttled them with his tail, there was always another monster to take over.
It was beginning to feel less like a fight and more like slow suffocation. Nelson started to become dizzy, and soon his punches weren’t connecting properly. He felt a tight grip on his tail, then his wrists. Something wrapped around his neck, choking him, and suddenly he was being lifted. His feet were trapped in the hands of red monsters, and he couldn’t move at all.
‘Hey! How do you kill a monster?’ called out Jim with a big grin as Nelson was presented to him. ‘Seriously, how is it done? I mean, do you just tear him to pieces? Chop off his head?’
Nelson tried to block Jim’s words from his mind and focus on breaking free from the monsters’ grasp.
‘Anyone?’ said Jim. ‘Does anyone know the best way to kill him?’
Through the crowd of Jim’s army pushed a chubby pink monster. When he had reached Jim’s side he looked up at his master and licked his lips with a long grey tongue.
‘I will eats him,’ said the monster, and the army cheered at this fantastic idea.
‘You can do that?’ said Jim, sounding impressed.
‘Mmm . . .’ said the monster hungrily. ‘He gonna burn in ma belly.’
‘NO!’ roared Nelson, struggling to escape.
‘You can’t fit all of him in at once, can you?’ asked Jim of his greedy pink monster.
The monster nodded and opened its mouth, which seemed to dislocate at the jaw so that the bottom row of teeth fell almost to the ground.
‘Wow! Impressive,’ said Jim.
‘PLEASE DON’T DO THIS!’ roared Nelson, but Jim just shook his head and gestured for his monsters to proceed.
They suddenly rushed forward and crammed Nelson into the pink monster’s mouth, which slammed shut like an oven door.
Jim’s monsters cheered and lifted their master high above their heads.
‘REVENGE!’ cried Jim triumphantly.
‘REVENGE!’ roared Jim’s monster army.
LAST THOUGHTS
Nelson had been inside Nosh’s belly many times before. Until now, it had been the most appalling place Nelson had ever been, but the belly of Jim’s pink greedy monster was even worse. Firstly the smell, which was like hot vomit. Then there was what it felt like: there was a sweaty stickiness to the stomach walls, and at the bottom was a shallow pool of acid that was slowly eating away at Nelson’s skin.
Nelson knew he was about to be incinerated. He could already feel the heat intensifying in the stomach walls. He could even hear the cheers of the monsters outside as they waited for the final blast of flames to erupt from the pink monster’s head. These would be Nelson’s last thoughts . . .
He didn’t want to die. He wanted to live. More specifically, Nelson wanted to live as a normal boy and maybe even grow into an adult one day. But that was never going to happen now, and he just had to accept it. It was at this moment, one of the very last moments of his life, that Nelson’s family appeared. Not literally – that would be impossible as there was barely enough room for Nelson, let alone anyone else – but in his thoughts. The image of the photo that was taken at the party appeared to Nelson as clearly in his mind as if it were right in front of him. The sight of their faces, and the love that they felt for him, made his heart swell. Right there and then, Nelson Green realized that there was an even bigger reason to go on living than his own sense of self-preservation. The reason to go on was his family.
And with that thought, the pink monster who had eaten Nelson exploded into a thousand tiny pink pieces.
WHAT IN THE WORLD JUST HAPPENED?
The thought of his family had not just made Nelson’s he
art swell, it had made his entire body swell. In fact, ‘swell’ doesn’t really describe what happened accurately. It was more like Nelson had exploded from his original size to the size of a house, as quickly as a hot buttered kernel of corn pops into a puffy white cloud of popcorn.
Jim and his monsters were sent tumbling backwards in all directions as the massive and mighty Nelson Green stood towering over them, still dripping in stomach juice. He looked as if a four-year-old had had way too much sugar before designing their own Godzilla. For a moment Nelson didn’t understand how he had survived or why the cathedral looked so small, but then it clicked. He was alive, and he was huge, and it was all because of the love he felt for his family.
What a day he was having.
Nelson looked down at Jim’s little monsters scattering around his feet, and felt his lips pucker and protrude until they were sticking right out of his face like a trumpet.
‘HOOOOOOOOOONK!’
The noise was so loud that all radio waves, TV signals and electricity within a three-mile radius were blacked out by the sonic shockwaves emanating from his giant lungs.
Jim’s fear of what he was now facing was shared with his monsters. They knew their master was scared and they ran to attack the great Nelson. It was pathetic, really. Though Jim’s monsters bit and punched and beat at Nelson’s legs and feet, Nelson barely felt a thing. He knew a fight was a waste of time and that the best way to end this quickly was to do what they’d done.
And so with his four arms, and the hand at the end of his blue and rubbery tail, Nelson began picking up handfuls of monsters and shovelling them into his great trumpet-like mouth.
The taste? Well, as you can probably guess, it was hardly a delicious snack. It transpires that evil tastes worse than fried soiled nappies, but this was hardly the moment to complain about the cuisine.
Jim’s bird monsters flew into the air and tried to peck at Nelson’s head, but all Nelson had to do was swing his head from side to side for his horns to knock the bird monsters out of the air. A few of them escaped impact and dive-bombed Nelson’s face. One of them became impaled on a giant cactus needle sticking out of Nelson’s cheek. Nelson pulled the bird monster off like you would pull an olive from a cocktail stick, before swallowing the screaming bird monster whole. Yuck! That one tasted like earwax and public toilets. His great tongue, the size of a surfboard, licked his cheeks and collected up any remaining bird monsters still trying to attack his face. One of Jim’s bird monsters had tried to attack Nelson by flying up his nose. Not a bad idea . . . but this only made Nelson sneeze. The bird monster shot out of his nostrils, contained within a huge gelatinous blob of green cactus juice that covered the floor.
‘Waaaah! No! Nooo!’ cried Jim, his head only just above the green goo while his body was trapped inside it.
Nelson bent down and with all four hands scooped up the goo.
‘Please! Don’t eat me!’ cried Jim, but Nelson had no intention of eating him. With the rubbery blue hand at the end of his tail, Nelson plucked Jim out of the handful of goo like you would extract a hair from an otherwise lovely bowl of soup, dropped him on the ground, and then began to fill his mouth with great handfuls of goo-covered monsters.
Don’t go thinking Nelson was enjoying this. He was finding this as disgusting as you are, but when you are trying to rid the world of a monster army you can’t go getting squeamish. Anyway, the worst part wasn’t eating the monsters; it was the wriggling and squirming Nelson could feel as they filled up his stomach.
Nelson burped, and a plume of purple gas rose from his nostrils. Something yellow caught his eye, and Nelson noticed the last of Jim’s monsters: a bird monster on the rail of the Whispering Gallery. Nelson plucked it from the rail, dropped it into his mouth, and then bent low to address his enemy, who was cowering on the cathedral floor.
‘I’ve done you a favour,’ boomed the voice of the great Nelson.
Jim could not reply. He just shivered in fear.
‘Trust me, living with monsters is harder than you think.’ Nelson felt his stomach gurgle. Oh no. He was about to erupt.
Nelson crouched before the main door, which, even though it had been blown wide open by Jim’s monsters, was still not big enough for him to walk through. He lay on his stomach, dragged himself through the doorway and stood up in the street, just in time to feel the flames shoot out of the top of his head. It looked like a rocket launching upside down, and the flames burned so fiercely that they pushed Nelson down and down, making him shorter and shorter. And they did not stop burning until Nelson was back to his normal size, though still very much a monster.
‘Urgh,’ said Nelson with a shudder, black smoke swirling around him. ‘That was absolutely disgusting.’
Every single human being in the area surrounding St Paul’s screamed and ran as fast as they could away from the immediate vicinity. They still could not see Nelson, but they saw the flames and the destruction, and no one wants to hang around and take selfies with something as frightening as that going on.
Back inside the cathedral, Jim collapsed on the floor. It was all over, and once again, he felt like the loser in life. He felt hopeless and angry, and tears sprang from his eyes.
Nelson walked back into the cathedral, black smoke still swirling from the pepper-pot holes on the top of his head. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s over now.’ He felt the clarity and certainty he used to feel when he was with his monsters. They may not have been in the building with him now, but somehow the clarity was still there, and it meant he knew exactly what to do next.
‘How is it over?’ sobbed Jim. He was so weak, confused and cold that his body began to shake. The craving to be back on the sin extractor was unbearable.
‘Because we’re not going to fight any more, and you’re gonna make a new start for yourself.’
Jim snorted. He clearly found the idea of a new start preposterous.
‘The thing is,’ said Nelson, ‘I don’t know why I think this, but something tells me you’re not really a bad person. You’re just a bit of a mess, aren’t you?’
Jim just shivered, his teeth chattering like castanets. ‘’S’all right, nobody’s perfect, but everyone deserves a second chance,’ said Nelson.
‘Not me. I’m just gonna go to jail for the rest of my life.’
‘Nah. There’ll be police and ambulances and all that stuff arriving here in a minute, but you’re going to be long gone.’
Nelson reached out to Jim with one of his red hands, and Jim flinched.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ said Nelson. ‘In fact, I think you’re gonna like this.’ Nelson scooped a handful of green goo from Jim’s shoulder and presented it to him as a gift.
‘This is cactus juice. We call it the cactus cocktail. A bellyful of this will give you power you’d never believe.’
‘I don’t understand,’ murmured Jim.
‘It’s like rocket fuel. It puts your body and your mind into, like, a super-mode. It also heals any health injuries and makes you think straight. Here.’
Nelson gestured for Jim to take the goo.
‘Once you’ve swallowed it, you’re gonna feel fantastic and see everything clearly. Like, really clearly. And that’s when you are going to run away and start a new life. And it can be any life you want, anywhere you want.’
Jim tentatively took the goo from Nelson’s hand, though much of it slid though his fingers.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Nelson with a smile. ‘It tastes better than it looks.’
Jim nodded sadly, opened his mouth, and swallowed the green cactus juice.
‘Well?’ said Nelson.
‘It’s a bit lemony,’ said Jim.
‘Now, in a few seconds you’re going to feel amazing, but it won’t last more than twenty-four hours, OK? Afterwards you’ll need a massive sleep, but until then you are going to run as fast and as far away from here as you can – got that?’
Jim nodded, his cheeks already flushed with new energy.
‘Ready?’
‘I feel incredible,’ said Jim with a gasp.
‘And do you know where you’re going?’
The cactus juice lit Jim’s brain up like a Christmas tree, and all at once his thoughts became clear.
‘Scotland. My dad lives there. I haven’t seen him since my parents divorced. You see, I was always angry at him, but I think if I gave him a second chance . . .’
‘Yeah, Jim, I don’t need all the details – just get going,’ urged Nelson.
‘Wow. This stuff is amazing.’
‘OK. On your marks, get set . . . GO!’ said Nelson, and Jim shot off out of the cathedral like a racehorse out of the starting gate.
‘Woooo-hooo!’ cried Jim as he reached a speed usually associated with Formula One racing.
THE SLEEPING PARTY
Though he looked like the very definition of a freak and his entire family were lying on the floor of the crypt, Nelson felt calm and clear headed. He could hear the sirens of the emergency service vehicles on their way to the scene and the shouts and cries of distress coming from the street outside.
The purple gas had gone, but everyone at the wedding was still fast asleep. Nelson touched his mother’s head with one of his little orange arms and knew at once that the cut she had received to the top of her head would need nothing more than cleaning up and a bandage. His dad was covered in dust, and his arms were wrapped around his wife. It was the first time Nelson had noticed how perfectly they suited each other.
Yes, a lot of the guests were going to wake up and experience a great deal of shock, but they’d get over it. The most important thing to do, in the few seconds Nelson had left before the police arrived, was change.
The sin extractor was covered in a layer of dust, and two of the legs were bent, which made the table lean at an awkward angle.
With his powerful red hands, Nelson twisted the bent legs back into an upright position. There was a very loud snore and Nelson turned to see Rodeo Jones asleep on the stage with the microphone pressed up to his mouth, his snore hugely amplified.
The Curse of the Deadly 7 Page 11