Stop Those Monsters!

by Steve Cole

  “And Killgrotty,” Alfie added.

  “And the bouncer at The Severed Arm,” I added some more, “all mixed together. The scariest bits of each, to make the scariest monster anyone’s ever seen!”

  “Seen,” the strange voice whispered again. There was a lower note in it this time, like a chorus. “Seen.” I peeked over the crag to make sure nothing horrid was sneaking up on us. But the pack of monsters was still waiting across the cave with Bosstradamus.

  “One minute left,” snarled the monster mastermind.

  “Do you think you can do it, Zola?” Verity wondered. “Freeze us into monsters that’ll give this bunch the willies and wave us around a bit to scare them away?”

  “I have only limited experience of the art of puppetry,” said Zola bravely, “but I’ll try to work you all alone.”

  “You all alone,” came the echo in my ears – no. In my MIND. I felt dizzy. “You all alone,” the voices were telling me.

  “Me,” I said quietly. “Use all your energy, Zola, the last of your powers to turn ME into a thing that’d give any monster in the world nightmares for months, just by looking at it.”

  Alfie looked worried. “You?”

  “If I’m a monster, I can’t use the crystal,” I reminded them. “The longer I stay that way the better. And the bigger and nastier Zola can make me, the longer the rest of you will have to run for it. Maybe you’ll find another way out.”

  Zola looked flustered. “I told you, I’ve never changed a human before now!”

  “Try,” I urged Zola. “You have to try. I’ve been sent behind the sofa by scary monsters in my time . . . maybe this lot will run off too.”

  Verity looked doubtful. Alfie looked doubtful. But Zola was smiling, even as little tears rolled down her green gorgon cheeks.

  “I’ll do my best,” she promised. Then she lowered her head and pulled off her dark glasses, letting them slip to the ground. “Let’s all hold hands and stand in a circle. Share and focus our energy. It’s worth a try.”

  “Abso-nibblin’-lootly,” said Verity, thrusting one paw into my hand, and one into Zola’s.

  “I never held hands with a lady-dude before.” Selfconsciously, Alfie gave his big pincer to Zola, and his little one to me.

  “” bellowed Bosstradamus.

  “Try to relax, Bob,” Zola said. “Clear your mind, like an artist about to start a brand new creation. Don’t think about all the monsters behind you.”

  “All the monsters,” came the echo again. The low part of the voice was stronger now; a man’s voice, cracked with age. “All the monsters.” He sounded urgent, insistent. “All the monsters . . .”

  “I’m ready, Zola,” I whispered. “GO!”

  Zola raised her head and fixed me with her eyes. I gasped as my body seemed to take root, fixing me to the ground. Amazing colours swept and sparked through Zola’s irises as they grew larger, darker. Her snakes were waving and coiling as if conducting an orchestra of unknowable forces all about me.

  I found I couldn’t look away.

  (“All the monsters!” came the voice. “Scary! Think!”)

  My bones felt stiff, my skin was burning.

  (“You alone! All scary!”)

  I was so scared in any case that it was hard to summon up much in the way of new terror. And the words I’d heard, they were shifting, sifting through my head, finding new patterns...

  (“You – alone for now – think scary! Be all the monsters...”)

  My brain felt like it would squelch out black goo like the ghastly monsters in Fiend Without a Face. Oh! Those horrid brain-things, even creepier than a zooloob… It made me realise that the monster-mash in Zola’s mind might be scary, sure – but those things would be KNOWN to Bosstradamus and her scumball army. If only I could show her the monsters from all the old movies I’d watched, over and over on so many late nights and lazy afternoons.

  Suddenly, all that watching felt almost like TRAINING.

  That was a scary thought.

  “” the voice bellowed in my mind.

  And so I did. As I stared into Zola’s swirling eyes, I started to piece together the perfect scary monster in my head – a masterful mash-up of all the creepiest, craziest critters ever to make it to screen. And this wasn’t some slapdash creation. Oh, no.

  Because as usual, I was using percentages.

  I’d make it 20% King Kong, giant-sized, hairy and tough . . . 22% The Blob, squelching and sucking up all who come near. 6% Dracula, for fangtastic chills . . . 10% Creature From the Black Lagoon, cos it’s so flippin’ creepy . . . 24% DinoBeast, tipping the scales with jaws and claws and a terrible tail. 12% bug-eyed mutant monster from this one movie I saw in glorious, goriest Technicolor, because that thing was just sooo weird . . .

  And while my body began to transform, I held the mental image of my monster-mash-up in my mind. I felt jelly flesh squeeze through my human skin . . . the crack of my spine as my body turned scaly, hunching over. Strength hummed through me; with Zola’s eyes on mine, I had never felt so powerful . . .

  I remembered what she’d said about turning her gorgon glare on me, back when we were trudging towards the Wilderness Forest: “Your body make-up is so different to a monster’s. Can you imagine what might happen?”

  Well, I have plenty of imagination. And I imagined myself not a still life like Zola’s other creations – but a full-of-life.

  “Whoa, man!” I heard Alfie cry. “He’s moving! Bob’s still moving!”

  In fact my whole body felt zinging with movement, as my artistic creation came cartwheeling into life! My jaws were getting longer. I was building massive muscles. I was growing so much larger, so much tougher and taller, stranger and crazier – but I could control my new body well, because my percentage fixation had left all my body parts in perfect proportion!

  How long did I have in this incredible form? I didn’t know. But I saw Zola fall to the floor, saw Alfie and Verity dragging her away, and knew that now – right now – success or failure would be down to me.

  I stared at the assembled monster masses below – they looked so small, suddenly, like ants beneath my feet – and I bellowed down at them at the top of my King Kong lungs:

  And at once, those masses scattered.

  “Cowards!” Bosstradamus hollered. “Come back! Come back, you—”

  I guess my nemesis never knew what hit her – but for the record, it was a double-whammy of DinoBeast claw and King Kong foot.

  “” She went flying through the air and smashed into the cave wall. The impact knocked a crater in the rock, and even from my great, enormous height I’m sure I could see little tweety-birds flying round her dazed head.

  Suddenly I wasn’t a victim any more. Suddenly, I was fighting back. And as the realisation struck me it felt as strong and intoxicating as the power Zola had poured into me.

  I felt prickles and scratches at my legs. Some more marauding monsters were attacking, trying to bring me down. I barely felt their blows, but decided it would be rude to ignore them. I leaned over and bellowed, blowing several away. Then I brought down my big Blob fist on the ones still left. The hapless monsters were squelched and sucked up and absorbed with horrible speed – just as I’d always imagined the real Blob would do.

  I stomped about, waving and boggling. Since my face resembled a hideous Hollywood fiend, with King Kong’s hair and Dracula’s fangs and an extra-large mutant brain-case, it’s fair to say that Bosstradamus’s gang had never seen a more far-out and frightening creation.

  I heard Alfie’s voice far below. “See that?

  “It’s true! Every single one of them can,” Verity added in an authoritative squeak. “The toxic-waste nose thing was just a joke, but THIS is what they do when they’re mad . . .”

  “It’s lies!” Bosstradamus wailed, watching what was left of her army fleeing the scene at high speed. “Lies! We can conquer the world . . . destroy all humans . . .”

  “I don’t think so, Bossy-boots!” Zo
la cried, getting uncertainly to her feet. “You’re the pits . . . and that’s where you belong. Right, Bob?”

  I agreed, and stretched out a King Kong paw to gather up Bosstradamus. She struggled and twisted in my grip, but she couldn’t get free. I strode right over my house, stepped over the Star Jewel on its pedestal and, in the sudden darkness beyond, breathed DinoBeast fire to light my way. There was a great, jagged split in the ancient rock. The pit into which Merlin had cast Bosstradamus, so long ago.

  “It took you fifteen hundred years to climb out?” I hissed through Dracula’s creepy vocal chords. “Well, don’t worry. It’s a much shorter journey going . . .”

  I raised Bosstradamus, struggling, high into the air – then hurled her down into the pit with all the strength I could muster.

  “” she screamed, hurtling from sight into the shadows of the pit. Her cries echoed around the ancient rock for almost a minute.

  Then the echoes, like Bosstradamus, were gone.

  There was a loud in my head, and suddenly I found myself back beside the Star Jewel on its pedestal. I had regained my Bobness! I was back to normal size, normal body and, well . . . just normal.

  Zola’s glare had completely worn off, and for a moment, terror seized me – a rehearsal, so I imagined, for some disgusting monster grabbing me just as sharply. But, no. There were no other monsters around. No others, besides—

  “Verity! Alfie! Zola!” I held out my arms to my fabulous friends, and they bundled over, wrapping me up in a hug. “Zola, whatever you did—”

  “Wasn’t I ” Zola cried. “As artistic statements go, that was . . . well, it was . . .”

  Verity squeaked. “It was ‘boom’!”

  It was ” Alfie picked me up and squeezed me happily. “How much do you rock, Bob? Thanks to Zola you trashed, like, the whole army and threw Bosstradamus down to the bottom of the world. We’ve got at least another fifteen hundred years till she can climb out again!”

  “You,” said Killgrotty, who was wide awake now, and staring at me in wonder. “You . . . the four of you, you . . .”

  Verity smiled at him sweetly. “We rock?”

  “We kick butt?” Zola suggested.

  “We’re down with the boom?” said Alfie.

  “You’re . . . ” Killgrotty’s face had darkened. “Under arrest for... well, I mean, for almost

  “Uh-oh.” I turned to the Star Jewel beside me and picked it up from its pedestal. At once it glowed pinky-orange in my palms. “I think this thing is switched on,” I told Killgrotty with a smile that was leaving ‘mischievous’ behind and moving on to ‘wicked’. “And you know what? I really wish that you and your greenie gang were a long way away . . .”

  “What?” Killgrotty’s three eyes were twitching with rage.

  Too late. Suddenly, he was gone.

  “Woo-hoo!” Verity hitched up her toga and did a little dance. “Wishes come true! How about that? The Star Jewel works!”

  “I’d like to try another test.” I turned back to my trashed house – an unholy (or rather, very holey) mess of broken walls, smashed ceilings and splintered floorboards. “I wish my house was all fixed up and like it was before Bosstradamus got her paws on it!”

  A blur of uncertain colour engulfed the house and then, There was my house, back to how it was, all fixed up in a flash.

  “You have but one wish left,” came the stern, male voice I’d heard in my head before. “Use it wisely, Robert Bee . . .”

  Verity, Zola and Archie were looking round, trying to locate the source of the voice. I pointed to the dust that Mother Poison had left behind when she’d disappeared. Now it was spiralling up from the ground and a very different figure was forming and transforming . . . a tall, skinny man in a pointed hat, with long grey hair and an extra-bushy beard. He wore a long cowl, covered in the same runic symbols as Mother Poison. He looked at me, his eyes dancing with power.

  “Who’s this cranky-looking old dude?” Alfie said.

  “How dare you!” the old figure grumbled. “I am the wizard Merlin..”

  “Merlin!” Verity gasped. “The founder of our world.”

  “Amongst other things,” Merlin agreed grandly.

  I was feeling a bit ‘euwww’. “Er, did you just form out of Mother Poison’s leftovers?”

  “They were my own leftovers, thank you very much!” Merlin looked at me with disapproval. “When I first created Terra Monstra, I appointed Mother Poison to guard the Star Jewel – and so used my magic to extend her life by hundreds and hundreds of years. That magic bond was like a thread running from this world to mine, it left me linked to her, you see? So I could look in on the old place from time to time.”

  “As you do,” I murmured, slightly blown away by all I was hearing. (I mean, MERLIN?)

  “Now the danger has passed and the Star Jewel no longer at risk,” the old wizard continued, “I have released Mother Poison from her long, faithful service.”

  “By turning her to dust? Harsh, man.” Alfie shook his head. “Couldn’t you just have given her a gold watch or something?”

  “I have returned her to my own time and place, in Camelot, just as young and pretty as once she was.” Merlin paused. “Which wasn’t really very young and pretty at all. But then, an old duffer like me can’t be too choosy.” He waved dismissively. “Anyway, think not sadly of her, but joyfully of me! For I planned for this moment, long ago and it’s worked! I foretold everything, you see.”

  “Everything?” Verity echoed.

  “” Merlin was practically dancing from foot to foot in excitement. “I foresaw that Bosstradamus would one day rise from the pit in which I’d left her . . . that the unavoidable leaking of eerinium would affect matter in the immediate area above ground . . .”

  “Wow,” I breathed. “And you even saw that I would end up here?”

  “Of course!” Merlin boomed. “Well, I predicted it would be you or someone in your family. Or if worse came to worst, a family pet. Oh, and be oddly obsessed with percentages too.” Merlin looked a little uncomfortable. “Basically, Master Bee, I ensured that most of those who lived in your home would love monster movies, and so grow well-versed in monster lore and legend, the better to become my multi-monstrous champion in the final battle I saw coming.”

  “Wow,” I frowned. “I feel so special.”

  Merlin moved on quickly. “I, er, even foretold that these brave, proud monsters here would find you and lend their skills to your struggle . . . And that one would betray the others, through no fault of her own.” He gave Verity a sympathetic smile. “And rather cleverly, I allowed for it all! I knew that Bosstradamus would one day seek to draw Bob’s house here . . . and that she would summon the most evil monsters in this land to hide inside it.” He tapped his long nose. “And I decided that this was the perfect moment to strike back.”

  “Because all the evil monsters were in one spot – ready to be dealt with once and for all!” Zola’s snakes looked at each other, impressed. “Nice foretelling!”

  Merlin looked very smug. “Wasn’t it just?”

  “Except, I didn’t know the password to get the crystal,” I pointed out. “And so your servant, Old Mother Bag-Face, nearly totally killed me.”

  “Er, really?” Merlin looked a bit shifty. “I must have overlooked that!”

  “Actually, I had the password.” Verity started searching her pockets. “It was in Uncle Voshto’s notes.”

  “I knew it!” Alfie sighed.

  Verity handed me some paper. “Look, there it is.”

  I squinted at the page. “Then . . . the password was ‘omma-chonga-nunga-phrrrr’?”

  “Oops.” Merlin started playing with his beard. “That’s actually the old password, anyway. I changed it after the first twelve hundred years. To ‘password’. Sorry, lad!”

  “Sorry!” I shook my head. “Is that all I get for the trouble you’ve put me to?”

  “I gave you three wishes, didn’t I?” Merlin boomed. “So, go on. Make
your final wish. Replace the crystal on its pedestal; here it must remain, to keep powering Terra Monstra. It will return you to the human world when you ask it to.”

  “But what about Verity, Zola and Alfie?” I persisted. “They’ve nearly died fifty times3 over, because they thought they were getting wishes.”

  “Sorry, guys,” Verity told her fellow monsters, her fur blushing red. “My bad.”

  “Not only that, but my copter’s smashed to bits,” Alfie added.

  “And my homeland is full of zooloobs!” said Zola.

  Verity clasped her paws together. “And my poor uncle had his heart set on seeing that Star Jewel with his own eyes.”

  “Well . . . take a selfie with it, then,” Merlin said airily. “As for helicopters, they’re nasty, noisy things – you’re better off without one. Oh, and with Bosstradamus gone, the zooloobs will have long since drifted away from your fellow gorgons. So you can all push off home without delay.” Merlin looked outrageously pleased with himself. “Man, I’m good! Well, anyway . . . Farewell, proud monsters! Farewell, brave Bob! Now I must quickly pop over to a comic store in Atlanta in 1941 and pick up a mint copy of the first ever issue of Captain America – it’s a classic. Adios, amigos!”

  And in a blink, and with a whiff of rare newsprint, Merlin had gone.

  “Well,” said Verity, puffing out her hamstery cheeks. “We can all go home, he says.”

  “What home?” said Zola miserably. “I have no proper home.”

  “Me neither,” said Alfie. “My sisters are gonna kill me.”

  “And I live all by myself since Uncle Voshto went into hiding,” Verity told us, “it’s really dull. But . . . we can still all go home.” She winked at me. “We can go to Bob-ob-ob’s home.”

  I frowned. “Huh? Do what Bosstradamus wanted to do, you mean?”

  “Yep! Only without the mass destruction part. Think about it.” Verity put her paws around Zola and Alfie. “You want to be a stand-up comedian, Alf? Humans comedy. They have of comedy clubs. They’ll love you!”