Stop Those Monsters!

by Steve Cole

  Oh, and – by the looks of the dark, sinister lump catching up with me through the foaming rapids, ready to overtake – being EATEN by monsters too.

  The sight left me stunned for a time. Then it made me angry. “It’s not fair!” I shouted with the last of my strength. Didn’t I have enough ways to die right now? I stared, appalled, as a macabre fish-creature reared up from the water, part-hammerhead-shark, part-octopus (I was too terrified to catalogue the exact percentages but at a guess I’d say about 32.7% fish, 67.3% eight-armed freaky-thing). Its six huge eyes were boggling laser-red, its tentacles snaked out towards me.

  The nameless thing had the confidence and precision of a natural born predator.

  I had the despairing shriek and highly wet pants of a living lunch.

  I tore my eyes from its bulk, and yelped to find the line of rocky fangs at the waterfall’s edge now horrifically close.

  Looked back: the fish-thing was almost on top of me.

  Looked back again: the rocks loomed larger still.

  Looked back again, again: squiddy tentacles were closing on Alfie’s bright yellow bulk–

  Justas – with a pffffft! – Zola’s gorgon transmogrification wore off. Alfie was back to normal! He was no longer an inflatable.

  He was a sinkable.

  Alfie managed as the two of us instantly plopped beneath the water – an escape manoeuvre which the fish-thing clearly hadn’t expected. We plunged right through its tightening tentacles. As the current sucked us down I saw its bulky body speed overhead.

  Now the creature was ahead of us! Alfie kicked with all his strength and together we bobbed up behind it – just as it smashed full-force into the rocks in a scene best put across in glorious picture-o-vision:

  “” whaled the fish-monster (‘wailed’, I mean. Although, whales aren’t fish, they’re mammals, so the joke doesn’t even work. Mind you, that fish-monster wasn’t really a fish either. So maybe it does work? Get a pencil and correct it if you like, I won’t mind.).

  The stupefied beast clung on to the remains of the rocks for a second or two – until Alfie and I were swept into the back of it. Its squashy body saved us from death on the rocks and gave us a soft landing.

  But our double-impact sent the monster-fish-thing flopping over the edge of the waterfall – into the stinging spray-storm of the abyss.

  Alfie and I yelled.

  Freefall! We tumbled through space, half deafened by the thunder of the falls. The air was so wet I could hardly breathe. Instinctively, I clung onto one of the fish-thing’s fins (not exactly a teddy bear but all I had to hand); Alfie’s pincers were clamped around it too.

  FIN, I thought – they said that at the end of movies, sometimes: FIN, French for ‘End’, or ‘Finish’.

  And as Alfie and I went into freefall, ‘FINISH’ was written large in my brain. Not ‘finish’ in Finnish – that would be, LOPPU. Which sounds like, ‘le poo’, which might be French for ‘the poo’, but which isn’t: that would be, le caca. Cacan you believe it? Amazing what goes through your head when you’re plunging to your doom . . .

  The drop was so steep, it soon became clear that we weren’t going to land any time soon. By clutching hold of the fish-thing (which was maintaining a dignified silence – either that or it was dead), at least Alfie and I stayed together as we fell. It made me feel a bit braver somehow.

  “Alfie,” I called to him over the roar of the falls, “you okay?”

  “Er, not exactly!” Alfie called back. “I’m plummeting to my death!”

  There was that, I suppose. “You know what I don’t get?”

  “Any good luck, ever?” Alfie suggested.

  “Well, yeah. But I don’t get why this thing attacked so close to the ledge. Or how it survives in such a deadly river.”

  “It’s one tough-looking marine monster,” Alfie declared. “I bet it’s got a few tricks up its gills to help it—”

  Alfie and I yelled, thrown violently away from each other as the fish billowed outward. Suddenly its bulky body was wide and flat like a parachute, catching the updrafts, slowing its fall. Alfie and I just managed to hang on – and as we dangled there we burst out into wild whooping and joyous shrieks.

  “So THAT’s how it survives this river!” I laughed. “And how about that, so do— WHEEEEEEEEE!”

  The thing shook us free with a casual shrug of its fins and started soaring back up the colossal falls. I hardly had time to hold my breath before I smacked down into the churning, stinking water. It was suddenly much warmer water too, almost like falling into a jacuzzi – a really stinky jacuzzi full of sewer waste. With the last of my strength I swam for my life . . .

  And found the current washing me to the dark shallows at the side of the river. I spat out water and watched the flying fish-thing soaring back up the phenomenal falls, soon lost from sight in the haze.

  “” Alfie plopped up beside me. “We were very nearly drown with the boom, there!”

  “Alfie,” I panted, giving him a look, “could you please think up another catchphrase?”

  We both started to laugh. I tried to high-five him, and Alfie tried to high-five me back with his big claw. We missed, and that made us laugh harder. Given what we’d just come through, it was a nice feeling. It was nice to feel anything.

  Slowly it sank in (the same way that I hadn’t).

  I was alive.

  STILL ALIVE!

  I’d like to say that after my dance with death (a rubbish, poorly-choreographed dance that even the kindest dance judges would give a minus-six) the world seemed brighter around me. But, no, it really didn’t. It couldn’t, really. Everything else around here seemed black – black cliffs, black sand, a black plain leading onto black dunes. Even the river, which ran calmer here, seemed black as it flowed away into a far-off, hazy horizon. It was like a seaside designed by goths.

  “I wonder where the girls are?” said Alfie.

  “Maybe Zola turned Verity into an inflatable and did the same for herself?” I suggested. “I hope so. Then maybe they’ll wash up down here with us.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” said Alfie. “Most monsters hate doing the washing up.”

  I gave a little whimper. Not at the joke, which admittedly deserved one, but at the particularly black cave gaping right in front of me that had caught my attention. It was at least 5% darker than the other dark stuff all around.

  “Think that’s where the Star Jewel is?” I murmured.

  “More than likely.” Alfie nodded glumly. “It’s the scariest-looking place around.”

  “Maybe you should check it out ahead of the others getting here,” I suggested.

  Alfie’s wonky eyes narrowed. “Me?”

  “You’re scariest. You know—” I put my hands into claws and pulled my face into a pantomime grimace. “Grrrr, groar, I am Crudzilla!”

  “Stop!” Alfie cringed. “It’s too real, man! You’re scaring me.” He nodded to the cave. “See? You should go in. I’m just a comedian, you’re the one with scare power. I mean, that toxic nose thing—”

  “Enough of the nose!” I snapped. “Come on, Alfie, this is Monsterland! You’re a monster, I’m not!”

  “So, you have the element of surprise,” Alfie countered.

  came a high-pitched, wavery voice from the cave.

  I was so scared I jumped into Alfie’s arms. Unfortunately, he was trying to jump into my arms at the same time. We collided and landed in a tangled heap in the black sand.

  “Okay, fair play,” Alfie whispered. “Whoever just said that has the element of surprise.”

  “Come in, if you’re going to,” came the voice again. “I’ll put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea.”

  “Kettle?” Alfie looked blank. “Tea?”

  “It’s a human drink. My mum and dad like it.” I looked at him. “The Star Jewel was made by a human called Merlin. I always thought he was made up, since the stories all said he was magic, but maybe that’s him now?”

 
“Him?” The wavery voice sounded scandalised. “I’m a woman!”

  “Um, sorry,” I called back quickly. I peered into the cave, but it remained stubbornly dark. “Alfie . . . maybe we could both go in?”

  “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “That water was gross. Maybe a cup of pee will take away the taste.”

  “Tea,” I corrected him. “Unless it’s camomile. Then you’re bang on.” Ignoring his confused face, I took him by the claw. “Here we go, then . . .”

  We moved cautiously into the cave. As we did so, torches set into the rough stone walls burst into flame. And in the sputtering light, I could see the cave changing. The floor became wooden. The walls became smoother, painted white. Old furniture formed from the shadows, festooned with cobwebs like nightmare bunting. Grim-faced statues stood in strange, unnatural poses. A grandfather clock ticked heavily, like a slow heartbeat. There was a patch in the corner where the floorboards ran out, and crooked stones pushed up from soil like giant fangs. It was like standing in the hall of a haunted mansion. A rusty old-fashioned kettle was steaming over a small fire on the ground.

  An emaciated old woman stepped forward to stand before us. “Who are you?”

  I thought I’d be pleased to see another human being after all the weird monsters I’d witnessed down here. But I was wrong. The old woman’s gaunt face and blue staring eyes were made all the spookier by the flickering torchlight shadows. She wore a dress embroidered with runic patterns that seemed to shift and shimmer in the half-light, as if the fabric itself was alive and trying to speak. She raised her arms and pointed her long talons at us, like a witch ready to cast a spell.

  “Who are you?” she repeated. “Come on, the kettle’s boiling.”

  “Um, I’m Bob,” I said, accurately.

  “And I’m Alfie Crudzilla,” said Alfie. “How’s it hanging, dude? Um, lady-dude.”

  But the old lady had closed her eyes as if concentrating. “A human child, here? Is this the time of prophecy?”

  “Prophecy? I thought it was the time of cup-of-tea,” joked Alfie nervously. “Boom! Yeah, I’m with the boom—”

  “Silence, monster!” The old woman snapped. “Tea is for humans alone.” She picked up the kettle and hobbled over to one of the tables. I saw two crude, clay mugs stood there, one clean, the other coated in dust and cobwebs. “Shall I be mother?” She smiled horribly.

  “For so long I have guarded this space,” the old woman said. “Is it time at last for He Who Will Take Hold of the Star Jewel to claim his prize?”

  “I’mmmm . . . not sure exactly what you’re talking about,” I admitted. “But I am looking for the Star Jewel, I need it to wish myself back home, you see, I shouldn’t be here but my whole house was sucked in—”

  “Silence, boy!” the hag squawked. “Try to trick me and it will be the worse for you.”

  A torch behind us suddenly went up like a roman candle; a fiery cascade of white sparks lit the room. Alfie and I turned to face a pile of misshapen skeletons stacked high against the wall. I clutched hold of Alfie and he pinched me with a pincer.

  “You see, many have hoped to gain power over the Humamon Star Jewel,” Mother Poison continued. “Many have broken in here, claiming to be the chosen one from above, the one of prophecy.” She gestured to the skeletons. “You see what my lash did to them and their falsehoods.” She paused. “Although, admittedly, one of them was just a tourist who’d lost his way and was asking for directions. Ooops. But, anyway!” She sipped her tea and gave me a leering smile. “If you are truly the chosen human and would hold the Star Jewel, you will have no problem telling me the password that will stop my lash . . .”

  I swallowed hard. “Uh . . . excuse me?”

  “The password that would have been handed down to you.” Mother Poison smiled without humour. “You don’t have it?”

  “I bet Verity’s got it,” Alfie murmured.

  “We’ll have to wait till she gets here,” I agreed.

  “Oh, but by then the tea will be cold. I am ready to play .” She gave a toothless smile. “No trespassers may enter without feeling the lash of Mother Poison!”

  “Look, lady,” Alfie began, “why not forget all this weirdy-witch stuff and just let us through to the jewel thing?”

  “Weirdy-witch? ” Mother Poison pointed at Alfie. “You ”

  There was a whip-crack sound –

  Alfie jerked his head as if slapped. “Huh? What hit me?”

  “I did. Don’t you know anything?” The old crone huffed. “You ”

  The sound cracked out again. “Ow!” Alfie’s head jerked the other way.

  “Now, show some respect,” she snarled. “Monsters don’t matter to me. But if you persist with such rudeness, I’ll give you a proper tongue-lashing.”

  Alfie looked at me, incredulous. “That’s ‘the lash of Mother Poison’? A tongue lash?”

  “Yes, a tongue lash!” She smiled. “What can I say? Poisonous words simply trip off my tongue, you ridiculous rubber-faced rat’s bum!”

  “” With the sound of the whip-crack and a forked flash of lightning, Alfie was thrown back against the wall.

  “What the . . .?” I raced over to Alfie to check he was all right, and he blinked up at me, dazed.

  “I hope Verity makes it down here with the password soon,” he said, weakly. “This old trout’s pretty tough.”

  “Merlin would hardly have left me to guard his jewel if I wasn’t.” The hag pointed her fingers at me. “Password. Now.”

  “I told you,” I said, “I don’t know it! I didn’t know I had to know it. My, um, guide has it, and she’ll be along—”

  “Right now I’m trying to see things the way you do, sonny,” she roared, “but I can’t get my head far enough up my butt!”

  The flash of lightning whipcracked around me. I was thrown backwards with a roar, banging into the bone-pile.

  “Well, boy?” Mother Poison was looking at me, now. “You’ll join those bones forever if you can’t name me the word that will stop my lash.”

  “I keep telling you, I don’t know it!” I cried.

  The ghastly old bag tutted and shook her head. “It looks like you fell out of the ‘dumb-brain’ tree and hit every single branch on the way down!”

  “Arrrrgh!” The whip-crack came again and I felt the power spark through my skeleton, jerking me out of the bone-pile and into a table. Pain seared through my brain. “Look,” I gasped, “how would it be if my friend and I just waited outside?”

  “No, no, no. You can’t leave now. I’ve waited hundreds of years for a new victim to dress down.” She sneered. “Though let me tell you, talking to you is about as appealing as playing leapfrog with a unicorn!”

  Again the horrible power striped through me. I threw ridiculous shapes as I was propelled across the room. I throbbed all over. Barely conscious, unable to move, I saw Mother Poison float eerily towards me, eyes blazing.

  “Dear, oh, dear,” she sneered, standing over me. “One more blistering insult should finish you off for good.”

  Her mouth twisted open as she got ready to let rip with the final, killer line . . .

  I turned away from Mother Poison’s hideous grimace, braced myself for the next insult that would surely be the last I’d ever hear.

  But then Alfie’s voice rang out. “Hey, lady! You’re not the only one who can trash-talk round here, y’know? I’m a stand-up comic. I know how to put down a heckler.”

  “” I could see that Mother Poison’s professional pride was hurt. She spun round and pointed at him. “You snivelling worm! If you spoke your mind, you’d be speechless!”

  But before she could finish speaking, Alfie got his own line in: “You’re so ugly that when your dad dropped you at school he got fined for littering!”

  The lightning split between them. Mother Poison squawked and Alfie gasped and both staggered backwards.

  “You dare try to turn my tongue-lashing against me?” hissed the crone. “You’re about as us
eful as a vonky-donk on a mongoono-cycle!”

  I don’t know what that means, and I may have misheard it – because again, before she could finish, Alfie shouted her down: “Stow it, lady. If I wanted to hear from a bum, I’d fart!”

  The whipcrack sound echoed round the cave, the lightning flashed again. Alfie got a jolt that shook him sideways, but this time Mother Poison was zapped to her bony knees.

  “No!” she cried, sweat pooling in the deep lines of her face. “You . . . you couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel!”

  But the boot was well and truly on the other foot now, as Alfie took a stride towards her. “Hey! Your face makes onions cry!”

  Mother Poison writhed in agony as the comic Crudzilla’s tongue-lashing turned her own powers against her.

  “I love what you’ve done with your hair, Mother P – how’d you get it to come out of your nostrils like that?”

  The insult hit her hard, and with a cry and a clang, she went crashing into an old piano. The echoes rumbled round the cave for what seemed like minutes. I kept watching Mother Poison carefully, expecting her to rise to her feet and try again. But no.

  “How about that, huh? I beat her! I won! I’m man!”

  “You were awesome,” I said truthfully. “And I guess we don’t have to worry about a password any more. Let’s see where this cave leads.”

  So we did. We walked on and on through the shadows, the torches on the wall flickering on as we passed. Motion-sensitive flaming torches? It sounded flaming ridiculous, but by now I’d learned not to question the weird stuff. It happened anyway.

  And that was the understatement of the century as, after still more time spent walking, we reached a dead end that started to rumble and grate. It was as if the stone itself was straining to lay some kind of colossal egg:

  A split appeared in the smooth dark stone, and soon it started to widen. I found myself gripping hold of Alfie’s pincer, and he held my hand just as tight as we waited to see what fresh horror awaited us . . .