The Deadly 7

by Garth Jennings

  “I’m coming to you, my love,” called Brian, whose monotone voice conveyed about as much affection as a zombie with a toothache. He stomped through the jungle, his stupid shoes slipping on the black vines that crisscrossed the ground and his enormous goalkeeper-glove–sized hands grasping at branches to keep him from falling over. Though not at all dressed for the jungle, Brian seemed to know exactly where he was going.

  “Briiiiiii-aaaaaaan,” came the call once more. Whoever this voice belonged to sounded sweet and hopeful and very pleased to see him, yet Brian’s face remained blank as he came to a stop beside a pool that was about the size of a large trampoline. The water, if you could call it water, was as black as ink and surrounded by even more burned-out tree trunks, which jutted from the silky black mud like huge rotten teeth. Brian dropped to his knees and his lifeless eyes gazed into the black water.

  “I have returned to you, my love. But so thirsty. Must drink,” he said, drawing water from the pool to his lips with cupped hands.

  “Yesss,” sang the ghostly voice, “you must drink.”

  As Brian gulped at the water, inky rivulets ran down his chin as if he had been chewing a fountain pen. It may sound disgusting to you, but to Brian this water was delicious. It not only quenched his thirst, it stirred a memory in the back of his mind …

  * * *

  … Brian remembered when the water used to be pure and clear. It was the reason so many wonderful, spectacular plants used to grow here. This had been the River of Life. The water from which the very first organism on earth emerged and began to evolve into the creatures that now inhabit the entire planet. But all that ended ten years ago, the very second he lowered his wife’s burned body into the water so that she could heal …

  * * *

  His breathing became deeper. He wanted more of the inky water. Lots more. But when he lowered his hands to drink again the pond started bubbling and overflowing, for something was moving below. Brian instinctively shuffled back on his knees and watched as a truly hideous face, as wide as the entire pond, broke the surface of the water.

  At first glance it looked like a whale, but its skin was as translucent and gelatinous as a jellyfish. As the black water drained away you could vaguely see inside the creature’s head. Its veins and internal organs throbbed away, its brain suspended like a piece of moldy fruit in jelly, behind two very large and very disturbing eyes. They were disturbing because they were not whale eyes or even fish eyes. They were human eyes. They might have been as large as tennis balls, but they were undoubtedly human. Ugly strands of hair sprouting from the top of the creature’s head clung to the side of its slippery wet face, and when it spoke, the words came from its revolting rubbery, toothless mouth, which contained a large black tongue as long as a surfboard and as floppy as raw steak.

  This is what it looked like.

  Horrible!

  I know what you’re thinking—how can a person, even a creepy guy like Brian, love a big ugly whale? You might also be thinking, since when do whales talk? These are all very good questions. You see, this foul and blobby creature didn’t always look like this. She used to be beautiful and human and her name was Carla. Celeste’s auntie Carla, to be precise. You may recall Uncle Pogo telling Nelson how Carla had been very jealous of her twin sister for having been given the pendant filled with all their father’s love. Well, that jealousy was the reason she tried to take the pendant from her sister by force. But as soon as she had torn it from Isabelle’s neck, the stone had caught fire in her hand. Whatever magic had saved Isabelle’s life when she was a baby had the reverse effect on Carla, who went up in flames, setting the family home ablaze too. But Carla possessed a means to escape the flames—her father’s Bang Stone. You see, when she was a little girl, Carla had listened to Pogo’s stories of their father’s trips to the jungle with the Bang Stone, and she had paid very close attention. One day she had found the stone in her father’s abandoned greenhouse, and by the time she called Isabelle to make peace, she had learned how to use it.

  So had Brian. When Carla had caught fire, Brian had quickly swallowed the Bang Stone, brought her to the River of Life, and laid her in the water to heal. On the one hand it worked—she was still alive. But it took years before she even had the energy to speak, and in that time her body had transformed into that of a strange sort of whale. Her bitterness and jealousy had infected the water, turning it black and eventually killing every plant that had formerly thrived upon that pure and magical source of life. Poor old Brian would have been fine had Carla not forced him to kiss her big ugly face to prove he still loved her. When the water on her lips touched his mouth it turned him into the sort of zombie who would kidnap a teenager, wear shoes on the beach, and forget to rub in his suntan lotion.

  * * *

  “Did you find it, my darling?” asked Carla.

  “Yes.” Brian opened his satchel and produced a tiny music box.

  “Very good. Open it, Brian,” said Carla. Her voice was colder now. More businesslike.

  Brian opened the box and a sweet little melody accompanied a porcelain ballerina turning around on a wheel. He pulled open a drawer at the front of the box to reveal the contents: a plastic fake-tortoiseshell hair clip, several beaded necklaces, a couple of neon-green scrunchies, and a tiny scrap of paper with the password to Nelson’s family’s Wi-Fi written on it, but what Brian lifted out of the drawer was a thin gold chain at the end of which hung a lozenge-sized locket. Holding the necklace, he shuffled toward Carla on his knees.

  “Is this what you wanted, my love?” cooed Brian, as he held the locket out toward his wife’s huge face, but she answered him with a horrified gasp.

  “No! No! This is not the pendant!”

  “But it was in the box you asked for.”

  Carla screamed like a banshee and Brian toppled backward.

  “I must have that pendant,” wheezed Carla, struggling to regain control of her emotions.

  “I have failed you,” spluttered Brian, still flopping about like a seal in a terrible oil disaster.

  “No. There is still a chance. I will wake her. You will ask her where it is. And tell her. Tell her we will kill her family unless she speaks the truth,” said Carla with breathless desperation, before starting to convulse.

  (This bit is really disgusting, I’m afraid, but there’s nothing much I can do other than try to get through it as quickly as possible.)

  Carla’s eyes closed, her mouth opened, and she threw up something large from inside her stomach.

  And suddenly she was there.

  Celeste’s body lay in the black silt. The life jacket and clothes she had been wearing when she disappeared still covered her body, but her face glowed as white as marble under moonlight and her beautiful blond hair was now a tangled mass of black.

  “Where is the pendant?” asked Brian in his zombielike tone. Celeste merely yawned and blinked so slowly it was as if she would much rather be back asleep inside the creature, who had now sunk below the surface of the water to watch.

  “The pendant. Tell me where it is or your family will pay with their lives,” insisted Brian, rising to his feet.

  Celeste rolled her eyes and spoke as if talking in her sleep. “Oh no, please don’t do that,” she said dreamily, and sighed.

  “Then tell us where it is,” said Brian in a louder voice than usual.

  “My brother’s got it,” she said, and yawned.

  “I have been to your house. There was no boy. Where is he now? Where is your brother?”

  “Just ask Nelson nicely and he’ll give it to you. But please don’t hurt him.”

  “Then tell me where he is.”

  “I don’t know. Nelson, where are you? Where are you, Nelson?”

  Carla raised her horrible head and swallowed Celeste back down into her stomach like a dog stealing a meatball from the dinner table. I know this is all very odd, but what’s even stranger is how comfortable Celeste seemed to be inside this revolting creature. It looked as if
she was curling up inside a great big sleeping bag, except the sleeping bag was made of jelly and was actually a really disgusting monster’s belly.

  A silence fell. It felt as if the entire jungle was watching and appalled by what it saw.

  “Bri-aan,” whispered Carla after a large burp, but Brian did not reply, as he had been distracted by the silver locket sticking out of the swamp mud by his feet.

  You can see that one girl, Carla, was quite beautiful here with her dark hair and large wide eyes. The other girl, wearing thick glasses and braces on her teeth, but with a smile that radiated pure happiness, is Isabelle—Celeste’s mum.

  “She is telling the truth, Brian. The boy must have the pendant. Find him and bring it to me.”

  “Yes. Of course. But, my love … if you take the pendant, are you certain it will not burn you again?”

  Carla seemed to smile, although it could just have been trapped wind. It’s hard to tell on a face as big and strange as Carla’s.

  “The water from the river has made me strong and it will protect me. Now go!”

  Brian obediently got to his feet and took the ancient clay pot from his satchel. “Yes, my love,” he said as he began to trudge back toward the blackened clearing, the stench of rotten eggs already wafting from the pot.

  “Find the boy and bring me the pendant. Hurry, Brian! Hurry!” called Carla as Brian swallowed the fizzing blue stone, closed his eyes, and exploded.

  THE SPINNING BEACH BALL

  Nelson and the seven monsters closed their eyes.

  “Celeste.”

  “Ommmm…”

  Once again, their arms, claws, paws, and tentacles rose and quivered like compass needles pointing as one, but this time it was toward a beach ball that had a map of the world printed on it.

  Miser was the one who had found the ball while searching Uncle Pogo’s house for a globe. (He had also used this as an excuse to steal more trinkets from Uncle Pogo’s eclectic collection.) And now that ball spun around all by itself on the dining room table. It would have been a remarkable sight for Nelson had it not been the sixth time they had repeated this exercise. Each time the ball had stopped spinning in the same place, with the monsters all pointing at the same country, and if they really were about to set off to this location, Nelson wanted to be absolutely sure they were headed for the right place. It was, after all, a very, very long way from where Celeste had gone missing, and Nelson needed to be convinced this wasn’t going to be a very, very big mistake. Soul divining did have one pleasant side effect: every time they said her name, it gave Nelson a great swell of certainty that his sister was still alive and well.

  He held his breath and waited for the ball to stop spinning.

  Apart from the whizzing sound the ball made as it spun, all you could hear was the snoring, like distant thunder, of Uncle Pogo.

  * * *

  In the basement bedroom, Uncle Pogo lay on his bed in his overalls, snoring like a hibernating bear. Nothing in the world could wake him. Nelson had tried pouring glasses of ice-cold water in his face and a few stern shakes of his shoulders, but it was useless. Even when Nelson, Nosh, Miser, and Stan had accidentally dropped him while carrying him down to his room, Uncle Pogo’s big old body just thundered down the stairs like a human sled, coming to rest upside down but still sound asleep. Nelson thought it was a great shame that his uncle would not wake, because the prospect of embarking on such a tremendous journey with a bunch of monsters was even more daunting than being in one of Katy Newman’s awful plays.

  * * *

  As expected, the beach ball ground to a halt in exactly the same place as before.

  Nelson and the monsters opened their eyes in unison and (apart from Crush, who of course just honked) said, “Brazil.”

  “’Ow many times do we gotta do this before yer believe us, eh?” barked Stan, his red face looking angrier than ever.

  “I just want to be sure, okay? I’ve never done anything like this on my own before,” said Nelson, and Crush hugged his legs and gave a very long and loud honk of support.

  “Yer not on yer own, Nelly-son. You got us! We’re yer soulmates, Nelly-son!” shouted Nosh, rushing into the yard having just eaten everything that was inside Uncle Pogo’s recycling bin. He gave a great burp and jet-engine-style flames blasted out of several black holes in the top of his head.

  Nosh’s belly was like a furnace where everything he ate was incinerated. This was obviously how he could still be hungry having eaten an entire dog only hours before.

  As you can see, Nosh has little holes in his head like a pepper shaker. This is to let out the smoke and flames that erupt in his belly whenever he eats anything.

  Miser was packing an old trunk with all sorts of things he thought might come in handy from Uncle Pogo’s house, while Hoot polished his beak with Brasso. Puff sat on the sofa watching the TV through half-closed eyes, and Stan stormed about like a little red thundercloud.

  “We know she’s safe now, but for ’ow long, eh? Sooner we get goin’, the better!” barked Stan, and the monsters began shuffling toward the front door.

  Nelson pulled on his coat, threw his backpack over his shoulder, and looked back at Uncle Pogo’s phone booth. Should he call his parents? For a second Nelson imagined how that call might go …

  His parents would certainly think Nelson had gone round the bend if he said any of this to them—wouldn’t you?—and it was bound to make them even more upset than they must be already.

  No phone call then.

  Nelson would have to find his sister by himself. Well, with the help of his seven monsters.

  And so that was that.

  “Nelson!” shouted Stan, and Nelson turned just in time to catch his uncle’s van keys.

  “What am I doing with these?” said Nelson.

  “Drivin’ to the airport,” said Stan.

  “Shotgun!” shouted Nosh, throwing the front door open, which triggered that blasted security light once again.

  DRIVING MONSTERS

  Nelson sat in the driver’s seat and stared at the driving controls. Due to his lack of a right leg, Uncle Pogo’s van had been refitted so that the brake and the accelerator could be operated from a single lever next to the steering wheel, rather than by foot pedals. Forward to go faster, backward to brake. The monsters eagerly crowded behind Nelson awaiting takeoff. Until now, Nelson’s only experience of driving was several goes on the bumper cars at the amusement park (where he always tried to avoid bumping into people), playing the latest Grand Prix racing game on his PlayStation until he had completed every level and his thumbs were numb, and driving a tractor in a field at the end of the school fête last summer. None of these qualified him to drive a van through the streets of London, but they were better than nothing, I suppose.

  “Had to be a van, didn’t it? Couldn’t have had a nice car with proper seats,” grumbled Spike from the back of the van, and Stan would have almost certainly given him a thump if it wasn’t for all those cactus needles sticking out of Spike’s green skin.

  Nelson turned the key in the ignition, the engine started, and the monsters cheered.

  “Wait a minute. Even if I can drive this thing, I don’t know the way,” said Nelson, whose view through the windshield was now blocked by Hoot, who stood on the hood, having been voted out of the van by all the other monsters for smelling so strongly of Brasso.

  “Map! You need map, Nelly-son!” shouted Nosh, who had just found a coil of rubber hosepipe in the back of Pogo’s van and was now chewing it like you or I might chew licorice laces (or those really weird-tasting red ones).

  “I wish I had my uncle’s false leg. It’s got a GPS and everything,” Nelson sighed.

  “Ah, this leg you speak of—I may just know where it is,” said Miser, dashing to the back of the van and rummaging around in the trunk he had brought with him.

  “Wait, Miser, you didn’t steal my uncle’s leg, did you?” said Nelson, turning around in time to see Miser lift the leg out of th
e trunk.

  “I … I merely borrowed it,” said Miser guiltily as he pushed his way back through the cluster of monsters and thrust the leg into Nelson’s lap.

  On closer inspection Uncle Pogo’s leg was even more impressive than Nelson had realized. Like an advent calendar, the leg was covered in lots of little doors, but instead of dates, each door was labeled with what could be found inside. Nelson found the letters GPS at the front of the leg where you and I have a shinbone, and as he pushed the tiny door it popped open to reveal a small and very thin remote control.

  “Please enter your destination,” said the robotic female voice, and Nelson began tapping at the keypad.

  H … E … A … T … H … R … O … W …

  “You have selected HEATHROW AIRPORT. Please proceed to the end of Box Elder Drive and take the first right onto Lemington Road,” said the voice, and once again the monsters cheered.

  But now came the real test. Nelson was only eleven years old and was about to drive to Heathrow Airport in the middle of the night. This is not only illegal, it’s downright stupid.

  Nelson pressed the pendant against his chest. Instantly he was rewarded with a great wave of certainty, and without really thinking about what he was doing, he pushed the lever and the van jolted forward. Hoot fluttered into the air above the van and landed on the roof with a loud thud.

  Beep! Beep! A red light flashed on the dashboard, saying that the hand brake was still on. “Oh, I don’t know how to take the hand brake off,” wailed Nelson in a panicked voice.

  “I’ll do it!” growled Stan, promptly reaching forward, grabbing the hand brake from next to the driver’s seat, and ripping the entire thing out as if it was a bad tooth.

  With no hand brake, the van suddenly shot forward, clipped the pavement, and narrowly missed a lamppost.