by R M Scotford
The roof collapsed in on itself, sending up a huge plume of century old dust.
A figure as broad as a rugby player and as tall as a basketball player stepped out from the choking dust. Douggie dived back down behind the barrel. Today was not a good day to be a hero, especially after a sterling performance like that. The dark, ominous figure was walking in Douggie’s direction; he dared not breathe in case he was discovered. As the figure passed, Douggie nervously glanced up. It was only the thin boy in the red T-shirt and the blue Beanie hat.
“Strange,” thought Douggie, “he looked a lot bigger when he came out of the building. It must have been his shadow or something?”
The tall, thin boy ran across the open fields at breakneck speed, disappearing into the housing estate.
“Oh man,” Douggie murmured. Could life get any worse? It was bad enough having to avoid the Japanese girl; now he had to avoid this guy too!
He looked up at the building, or what was left of it. As the dust settled it revealed a sorry excuse for a historical landmark. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t seen the girl leave the building. She could have slipped away in the mayhem but it seemed unlikely. It was obvious that the tall boy had won this mental attack; he’d bounced out the warehouse like the Energizer Bunny, but the girl? She was nowhere. A dark and terrible thought came over Douggie, maybe she was in the rubble, or under the rubble, or worse.
Douggie looked at the building with horror, had it become a tomb?
Meanwhile, across town, Chief Inspector Travis Dent stood over the large map of the city.
“So, this is the site of the latest disappearance?” he inquired.
“Yes, Boss,” said Inspector Hatchet.
“And who reported the disappearance this time?”
“Concerned parents again, Boss, just like all the previous ones,”
Dent tapped his chewed-up pen on the table,
“Something’s not right here, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“Yes Boss,” replied Hatchet.
“Seven disappearing nursery teachers in the space of four weeks, no trace, no motive, and no family? Is that correct? None of these nurses have any contactable family?”
“Erh, yes Boss.”
“So they just left work and then POOF, gone, just like that?”
“Erh, yes Boss.”
“Ok, Hatchet, get yourself down to the latest kindergarten and interview everyone who’s old enough to speak. I want some answers.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Hatchet grabbed his jacket and made for the door. A burly police sergeant stopped him.
“Excuse me, Inspectors,” said the uniformed policeman.
“We have reports of an explosion at the old warehouse, down near the parks. Do you want to go and check it out?”
“Yes, of course. Hatchet, get my coat. We’re leaving,” ordered Chief Inspector Dent.
“Yes Boss,” replied Hatchet and tottered off after Dent, like a faithful puppy.
Once again, Douggie found himself picking a path through rubble. These powers can be pretty destructive, he thought. The old warehouse had been about the size of a small football pitch; now only a bed of broken slates and wooden splinters lay before him. It looked like a scene from a war movie.
Douggie was glad that he hadn’t been in the building at the time of the collapse surely nothing could survive this? The rubble was two feet thick. The girl had either got out or was buried. He turned to leave; there was nothing that he could do.
He was stopped by a coughing sound. He jumped round to see the girl. She was covered in dust from head to toe and her hair was matted with tiny shards of wood and debris.
“Ouch,” she said, rubbing her wild hair.
Douggie ran over to her.
“Are you ok? Are you hurt? How do you feel? Did you know the other boy? Do you feel sick? Are you hurt?”
The girl looked overwhelmed by all of Douggie’s questions.
“Ok, quit it with the questions, already,” said the girl. “Who are YOU?”
“I’m Douggie. It’s ok; I’m like you, we’re the same. I know you. Do you know me? Do you remember me from that day at the river?”
The girl tipped her head. Under all the dust she had big, bright green eyes and an infectious smile.
“Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. ”Yeah, I remember you.”
Suddenly she jumped back,
“I’m not going to fight you too, stay away from me. Go on, get out of here.”
The sparkle in her eyes had vanished and she now looked full of fear. She began to back away from Douggie, slipping uncontrollably on the rubble.
“No, no, it’s ok. I’m not going to fight you. I don’t know why, but I’m not.”
“So you’re not like me?” She sounded disappointed.
“No, really I’m just like you. I can... I can do weird stuff,” Douggie said shyly.
“Yah, most boys in my class can do weird stuff, what makes you so special? What makes you think you’re like ME,” she said, sarcastically.
“No, wait, look,” Douggie thought for a second. “Can you see that ball over there?”
Douggie switched his concentration to the ball. He thrust out his hands, imagining that they were powerful magnets. The ball flew across the sky into his waiting hands.
“That’s pretty cool,” she said. “How do you do that? I can’t do that.” She sounded impressed.
“I’ve absolutely no idea.” Douggie laughed.
He stared at the girl; she began to laugh too. Soon the two of them were laughing uncontrollably together. In the distance, the faint sound of police sirens rang out.
“We’d better get outta here. My name is Maggie, Maggie Chase.” She held out her dusty hand.
“I’m Douggie. Let’s go.”
Douggie took Maggie’s hand and they quickly scrambled across the rubble and onto the grass. As Chief Inspector Dent pulled up in his police car, the children ran unseen across the park.
Super Science Kid
Maximus Chan took out another piece of chalk and held it between his thumb and first finger. He pointed the chalk at the empty soda cans, lined up along a small wall. He kept his hand perfectly still and began to concentrate. The pressure in his fingers built; it felt like the chalk would crumble under the weight. Like a dart, the chalk flew out of his hand, flying through the air and piercing one of the cans. The can fell to the floor with a clank.
Maximus chuckled and pulled out another piece of chalk. At school, he was known as a bit of a nerd. His small size, large glasses and his love of anything technical meant that most people thought he was a geeky, which didn’t bother Maximus much although it could be quite lonely. No one was keen to hang around with the weedy, little techno-geek, which was a shame because as well as having a great understanding of science he could do some cool stuff. He shot another piece of chalk at the line of cans. He was especially good at doing this. He had no idea why, or where he’d learned it. For as long as he could remember he’d had superpowers.
What he liked doing most was guessing what people were going to say on T.V. He could watch a T.V. show and tell you what the people were going to say before they said it. This used to get him into lots of trouble with his parents because they automatically assumed that he’d already seen the T.V. show before, which he hadn’t. The words appeared in his head and then someone on the television would say them. Sometimes he could do this with real people — he could tell what they were going to say before they’d said it, but this was more difficult.
He took out the last piece of chalk and fired it at the cans, not looking where it went. Behind him the school bell was ringing faintly for the end of lunch, he would have to run quickly to make it to afternoon registration. His lunch break hiding place was quite a distance away, but it was worth it to come here, as none of the losers who hung round the school annoying everyone knew about this place. He picked up his satchel and scampered off across the playing fields.
Bes
t Buddies
Since meeting in the rubble of the old warehouse, Maggie and Douggie had spent almost every day after school together. It was exactly what the two children had dreamt of since their powers started to show, someone to share them with. Knowing that there was someone out there who was not only the same but also happy to be friends, changed the children’s lives. If they could be friends, and not fight, it meant the other children they’d encountered could all be friends too. The question was, how?
Maggie and Douggie were still trying to find out why they didn’t want to fight each other. Every night after school they would meet and greet each other nervously, hoping their mysterious truce hadn’t been unconsciously called off.
Maggie especially looked forward to meeting Douggie. She loved their long conversations about who they were and why they’d been given their powers. She also liked to look at Douggie’s cute tanned face, with his button nose and his small spikey dreadlocks. There was no doubting it Douggie was a funky kid. She loved to embarrass him by staring intensely at his mouth with her big green eyes while he chatted away. Suddenly, Douggie would become aware of her staring and become all quiet and shy. This caused her to break out into uncontrollable fits of laughter, leaving him bewildered and embarrassed.
“Don’t act so flum.”
“What does flum mean?” Douggie asked, getting even more confused.
“It means whatever you want it to mean, Flum Boy,” Maggie joked.
“You can’t just make up words. It’s not allowed.”
“I can do whatever I like,” replied Maggie, flashing him a wicked smile. “I’m special.”
“Yeah, but words are words, they don’t belong to us,” insisted Douggie.
“Well, who do they belong to?”
“Erh, erh, the government. Words belong to the government.”
“Who says? It’s my life, my mind, and my mouth. I’ll say what I want. My words are better anyway. Flum, FLUM, FLUM, FLUM.”
Douggie could never understand Maggie; she was like trying to hold water in your hands, no matter how hard you tried you could never contain it.
The two children talked for hours about how they could contact the other kids like them. Maggie thought it would be a good idea to put posters up around the town asking for anyone who had special powers to attend a meeting. For all Maggie’s intelligence and creativity, Douggie thought that this was possibly the dumbest idea ever and couldn’t believe it had come out of her mouth.
“If we put up a poster like that we will have every loony from here to Timbuktu turning up showing us all kinds of rubbish,” he argued. “It would also draw attention to our unique skills.”
The approach would have to be much cleverer than this. For one, how could they meet with the other children and be sure that they didn’t have a crazy ‘brain battle.’ The idea of the meeting was to become friends, not to start World War Three and destroy another building or street.
Their other problem was that they didn’t know exactly how many kids like them were out there. There were definitely two others, the Japanese girl, and the tall, brown, skinny boy, but Maggie was sure there was at least one more. She’d heard her friends talking about a geeky little Chinese boy who had no friends at school. Every day the boy would disappear at lunchtime to hide from all the school bullies. Maggie’s friend felt sorry for this boy and decided to follow him at lunchtime. She came back with stories of the small boy’s magical powers. No one believed the girl, of course, and they teased her for fancying a nerd. Soon everyone forgot the small boy, except Maggie. Maggie believed they needed to check this kid out.
Pop!
It was chaos in the Hobbs’ household.
“Grenwold, GRENWOLD,” screamed old Nurse Hobbs at the top of her lungs.
“It’s happened again; we have to get down to the Kiddy-Care Centre right now. This is the seventh malfunction in a month. Why are they so unstable? Grenwold, Grenwold, GRENWOLD!”
Nurse Hobbs’ fat face was now wobbling with fury, like a disco-dancing jelly. Grenwold tottered out from his tiny office underneath the large, ornate staircase, scratching his head.
“There seems to be some fault in the rebooting software, I’m working on it right now,” said Grenwold, puzzled.
“This can’t keep happening,” growled Nurse Hobbs. “With the investment from Mr. Augustus Pew, we now have enough money to go into full production. Each Kiddy-Care Centre should have at least five by now. But if we still have to keep replacing the older models... I’m not happy Grenwold. If they’re not stable, then they can’t be fully activated. Without full activation, we cannot proceed with the ultimate plan.”
Grenwold reluctantly pulled on his coat and shook his head.
“Maybe this model will reveal some answers? Who was it this time?” he inquired.
“It’s Brigitte,” cried Nurse Hobbs. “She ‘popped’ right in front of a class of three-year-olds. Lucky for us the average preschooler is as dumb as a brush and doesn’t even know what day it is. Quick there’s no time to lose!” ordered Nurse Hobbs.
Their golden Rolls Royce was waiting for them in their huge driveway, and they sped off leaving a swirling cloud of dust.
Nursey Head Boom Boom
Inside the Kiddy-Care Centre, Inspector Hatchet stumbled through the mounds of toys as he tried to question the kindergarten owner.
“Madam Hobbs, so, you say the last time you saw Brigitte was on Tuesday?”
“My, my, Inspector Hatchet,” Nurse Hobbs snarled, “I’ve told you twice already, please pay attention. I neither have time for Brigitte or your pointless inquiries. These girls are young and irresponsible; it’s not uncommon for them to disappear on a whim.”
“But seven girls have disappeared from your Kiddy-Care Centres in less than a month. There must be some reason? The police-force cannot overlook such a problem,” Hatchet pointed out.
“Look, Mister… What’s your name again?” Nurse Hobbs’s asked rudely.
“It’s Hatchet, Madam,” he said politely.
“Look, here Gadget, I have a multinational company to run and will not waste my time on a few whimsical nursery teachers. Good day to you.”
She stepped into her private office and slammed the door in his face, leaving him with a tiny two-year-old child tugging on his leg.
“Want pee-pee,” the child cried.
“Erh, what?” gasped Hatchet.
The small child erupted into a flood of tears and yells. The inspector picked up the toddler and rocked it gently,
“There, there, there,” he said, trying hard to soothe the baby’s tears.
A chirpy smile appeared on the young one’s face as Hatchet felt a hot, wet sensation shoot across his clean, white shirt. He held the baby out at arm’s length; pee was dripping from its leaky diaper, and it giggled uncontrollably.
“Nurse? Nurse? Anyone?” Hatchet whimpered, as he placed the leaking baby back on the floor.
Hatchet used a whole box of tissues to dry his pee soaked shirt. He gazed around the Kiddy-Care Centre; children and toys were everywhere. Occasionally a toy would go flying through the air with a horde of marauding toddlers following it, screaming with delight. Chief Inspector Dent was not going to be happy with him. Dent had asked him to get statements from everyone. Hatchet had failed to interview the owner, and the statements he’d taken from the other nursery nurses were almost identical, they’d answered the questions like robots. He rubbed his baldhead; he wasn’t looking forward to going back to the police station, that’s for sure. Another small child ran past him singing happily to himself,
“Nursey head, boom, boom. Nursey, boom, boom. Nursey, head, boom, BOOM.” The child threw its hands in the air in an explosive motion.
This caught the attention of Hatchet. He listened one more time to the strange song.
“Nursey head, boom, boom?” Hatchet muttered.
That was it. He grabbed the pile of damp yellow tissues and threw them in the bin, plonked his hat on his head a
nd headed for the door. It was all making sense now. He had to tell Chief Inspector Dent immediately.
The Battle of the Spinney
Douggie and Maggie made plans to contact the Chinese boy. They had come to the conclusion that as long as they didn’t annoy or surprise each other, they would not use their powers. It seemed that telepathic fights only occurred when two children accidentally bumped into each other or when one child challenged another. So it was important to keep a certain level of harmony when they were together. Getting into an argument was to be avoided at all costs as this could lead to all kinds of trouble.
The plan involved sneaking into the Chinese boy’s lunchtime hiding place and leaving him a note explaining everything. The problem was, how could they guarantee he would read the note and believe it? The risk was worth the reward though, so the children set off.
Nervously, they walked across the playing fields and into the small spinney of trees where they were told the little Chinese boy hid during school lunch breaks. It was Saturday morning, so there was no school. The playing fields were full of people practicing their favourite sports; the junior soccer team kicked balls around wildly. Along the running track, children of all sizes warmed up for training sessions. There were kids everywhere, laughing, joking and shouting. Maggie and Douggie did their best to slip past everyone without being noticed. As they entered the trees they could hear strange sounds.
PER-CHINK. PER-CHINK. PER-CHINK.
“What’s that?” Douggie mouthed.
Maggie shook her head,
“I don’t know?” she whispered. “Shush.”
Someone was in the trees ahead. This was not part of their plan. They had been hoping that the hide-away would be empty. They crept from one tree to the next, trying to remain as quiet as possible, suddenly —
CRACK.
Douggie stepped on a dry twig and shattered the silence. He shrank down into his favourite yellow T-shirt like a startled turtle, but there was nowhere to hide. The children froze, trying to do their best impression of a bush and blend into the shrubbery, but it was no use: they’d been busted. Up ahead they could hear sounds of someone moving.
