Jack Slater, Monster Investigator

by John Dougherty

  I did know what the secret weapon was.

  I was sitting on it.

  “Sorry,” Cherry said a moment later, “I must have misheard. I thought you just said the monsters could take over the world using a bed on wheels.”

  “What?” said Bernard anxiously, crawling out from under the bed and unfolding his big bunny-ears. “You mean it’s dangerous?”

  “Not to you, Bernard,” I said, “but just think about it. Why don’t monsters explore the house?”

  “Simple,” Bernard shrugged. “No one wants to risk being lit up. It’s safer under the bed . . .” His voice tailed off as he realized what I meant.

  “Bernard,” I told him, “get us to London – fast!”

  As we emerged into the darkness under a bed somewhere, I became aware of a strange sound. A sort of trundling, whirring noise, a bit like very, very quiet traffic.

  “Where exactly are we, Bernard?” I whispered.

  “A big furniture shop in Battersea,” he answered. “Some of the monsters come here to muck about at night when they’re not in a scaring mood. It doesn’t usually sound like this, though.”

  Cherry and I wriggled out from under the bed, and a horrifying sight met our eyes.

  From the warehouse at the back of the shop, a vast river of Pumfrey-Soames skatebeds flowed out onto the street. Their wheels made a quiet, constant rumble like the warning before the earthquake.

  “Hey! You ain’t going to leave me here, are you?” Bernard growled. He was still underneath the bed – an old-fashioned iron double, with no wheels. Although it was dark in the shop, the streetlights outside would be bright enough to vanish him. “I mean – talk about ingratitude! I risk my life warning you, nearly get myself lit up—”

  “Not now, Bernard,” I told him. “Hang on – we’ll hail you a cab.”

  Quickly, Cherry and I dashed across the sales-floor and leaped onto a skatebed as it trundled past.

  “Hey!” came a voice from underneath. “Who’s that jumping on my bed?”

  The monster’s head popped out from under the side of the skatebed.

  “ROAR!” it roared, and looked up at us – straight into the huge shining reflector of Cherry’s torch. It just had time to say, “Oh, poo!” before – FLASH! – it vanished.

  The bed glided to a halt, and then there was a clang!!! as the bed behind us crashed into our headboard.

  “Hey! Why don’t you learn to drive!” yelled a voice, and then there was a whole series of clangs and bangs as, behind it, skatebeds piled into one another.

  “Bernard!” we yelled.

  “Nice plan!” he said, appearing under our bed. We started to roll forward again, and after a moment the column of beds behind us did the same. “Where to?” he added, as we passed through the doors of the shop and bumped off the kerb onto the road.

  “Follow those beds!” I said grimly.

  At every junction, we met up with more and more Pumfrey-Soames skatebeds, until ours was just one of thousands, wheeling through South London towards the river.

  And soon we realized where we were heading.

  “Parliament!” whispered Cherry, pointing. There, on the other side of the river, Big Ben stood tall and proud – unaware of the vast army of monsters rolling towards Westminster Bridge.

  The vast army of beds wheeled slowly and threateningly up to the entrance to the House of Commons. And there the great monster master plan for the invasion of Britain hit its first problem.

  “Humph!” growled a monster under one of the front beds. “It all shut up! It night-time. No one here!”

  There was a pause, and then a noise like several monsters hitting whatever they used for foreheads with whatever they used for hands.

  Then another monster said, “I know! Let’s invade to the Crime Minicab’s house!”

  There was a noise like several dozen monsters scratching whatever they used for heads, and then another voice said,

  “Who?”

  “You know,” said the one who’d suggested it. “The Crime Minicab! The top banana! The bloke what tells the governmenty people what to government!”

  There was another pause, and then the first voice rumbled, “You so dim, Cynthia! Not Crime Minicab! You mean Prime Miniskirt!”

  “Prime Mini-stir!” another voice growled.

  “Ah-hah!” chorused a number of others. “Yes! Let’s go invade to the Prime Minister’s house!”

  The leading beds wheeled round again.

  We were headed for Downing Street.

  The policeman outside number 10 Downing Street turned as the first line of beds rounded the corner, and his jaw dropped – or at least it would have done if the strap of his helmet hadn’t been holding it up. British policemen are well trained, but not for the sight of an army of monsters under beds coming for you and bringing the beds with them. So he did what anyone with any sense would have done in his place.

  He rang the doorbell as hard as he could.

  Cherry and I saw our chance. “Meet us inside, Bernard!” I hissed, and with a running leap we were both on the road ahead of the beds and racing towards the policeman.

  The monsters in the lead were taken by surprise.

  “Children!” one of them yelled out. “Where they come from?”

  “Out of a mummy’s tummy, I think,” another one said.

  “You so thick, Cynthia!” growled the first. “You put children in the tummy, not take them out!”

  “Never mind that,” a third shouted, “they getting away! Chase them!”

  And they did. We belted along Downing Street with the skatebeds bearing down on us – fast. They’d have caught us if bumping up the kerb hadn’t taken them vital seconds.

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  The policeman inside number 10 had just opened the door for the one outside, who was quickly stopping being an outside policeman and starting to be another inside policeman. They both halted and looked at each other, and that gave us just enough time to squeeze past them before they shut the door. The first bed slammed into it as it closed.

  “Hey, you two!” one of them exclaimed. “Don’t you know where you are? You can’t just barge in here like that!”

  Cherry flashed her “Government Appointed Monster Investigator” badge.

  “We’re here on Ministry business,” she told them.

  One of the policemen examined the badge.

  “Well, it looks real enough,” he admitted. “But everyone knows there’s no such thing as monsters.”

  Just then, there was a loud BANG!

  The front door shook as the bed slammed into it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  “Tell them that,” I said.

  The door suddenly and violently exploded inwards. The skatebeds advanced upon us.

  “Run!” screamed the first policeman.

  “Where to?” screeched the second.

  “The stairs!” I yelled, and we sprinted.

  Down the corridor we pelted, the skatebeds clattering furiously behind us, bumping each other as they chased us, until we saw the stairs ahead of us.

  The policemen leaped.

  I leaped.

  Cherry tripped and fell.

  “Dinner!” bellowed the monster under the first bed, bearing down on her.

  “Time to go on a diet!” I yelled, turning and hurling myself at the bed. I grabbed at it as it reached her, catching my ribs on the frame and slowing it just for a second. A hot bruising pain burned across my chest. Cherry scrambled to her feet.

  The bed bucked and jolted savagely as the monster tried to shake me off. Then the beds behind slammed into it, taking my breath as they hurled me against the stairs.

  “Up you come, son!” one of the two policemen said. They grabbed my arms and hauled me upwards onto the stairs just in time. The bed jerked and lurched, the monster below it trying to reach me – and then it lifted a little too high. I caught a glimpse of a jagged purple claw as the light hit it, and
the bed crashed to the floor, suddenly still.

  We sat for a moment, half-way up the flight of stairs, as the first few monsters clattered about under their beds in the corridor below.

  “What we do now?” one of them muttered.

  “Dunno . . . oh, yeah, I remember,” said another. “Hey, you!” it called. “We want to speak to the Prime Minister!”

  “Er . . . we’ll tell him, then,” one of the policemen said. “Come on, kids, this way.”

  We could still hear the monsters below us clattering and muttering as we climbed the stairs and hurried along a wide, portrait-lined corridor to a very grand bedroom door. One of the policemen knocked.

  “Umm . . . errr . . . whassat . . .” said a sleepy voice, and then a moment or two later, “Enter!”

  We went in. The Prime Minister, his hair sticking out in all directions, was starting to sit sleepily up in bed.

  “Um . . . Constable,” he said, blinking, “why are you bringing two strange children into my bedroom? And why isn’t one of you standing outside the front door?”

  “Well – there isn’t a front door, Prime Minister. Not any more. Some very fierce beds have broken it down, and now they’re at the bottom of the stairs demanding to see you.”

  The Prime Minister sat up properly and turned the light on. He was wearing purple silk pyjamas with PM embroidered on the pocket.

  “Very fierce beds? What are you talking about? And who are these children?”

  “Jack Slater, Monster Investigator,” I told him. “This is my colleague, Cherry Jackson.” Cherry stepped forward and showed him her badge.

  “I see . . .” the Prime Minister said, looking at it, in a voice that meant he didn’t see at all. “But, hey, look, kids, surely you know that the Ministry of Monsters isn’t a real Ministry at all . . . because, let’s face it, there aren’t really any monsters under the bed—”

  “Oh, ain’t there, Mr Clever-Dicky Prime Minister?” growled a voice from somewhere underneath him. The Prime Minister squeaked and leaped out of bed as if a bug had just bitten him.

  “What was that?” he yelped, skittering over to the other side of the room and hiding behind a policeman. Cherry reached for her torch and I pulled out Freddy the Teddy, ready for trouble.

  “That was me,” the voice said, accurately but unhelpfully. “Come to tell you what we want.”

  The Prime Minister’s mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. I thought I’d better help.

  “OK,” I said, “the PM’s listening. Tell us what you want and then beat it!”

  The monster chuckled.

  “You that Monster Investigator kid!” it rumbled. “Jack Slater! One day maybe we have you for dinner!”

  “Try it, buster,” I warned him, “and you’ll get a mouthful of teddy.”

  The monster growled softly.

  “OK, Prime guy,” he went on, “here’s what we want. You look outside, you see we got you surrounded. Monsters everywhere. You go downstairs, we eat you. You go out of the house, we eat you. So you got to give up, see? “What we want when you give up, is this:

  “First, you gotta stop bein’ Prime Minister. We gonna have a Prime Monster instead, see? To tell everyone what to do.

  “Second, you gotta turn off all the electradicity. No more lights at night-time. Then we can come out from under the bed and eat the children. Not all the children, ’cos we ain’t greedy. Just some of them.

  “Umm . . . the one after second, you gotta get rid of all them nasty torches.

  “And, ummm . . . That’s it. Unless maybe we think of something else, OK? You wanna talk to us, we’s at the bottom of the stairs. And outside of the window. You wanna call your friends to help you think, we let them in and not eat them. Yet. You got till the sun comes up to make up your mind.”

  There was a shuffling sound, and then the monster had gone.

  I looked at the Prime Minister. He’d turned completely pale. So had the policemen.

  “What do we do, sir?” one of them asked.

  “I don’t know,” he replied shakily. “I really don’t know.”

  What we did was wait.

  The policemen went to stand guard outside the bedroom.

  Cherry tried to keep her eyes open, but she couldn’t. No wonder – after three days in the monster underworld, she must have been exhausted. Soon she was curled up in the corner, snoring gently.

  I sat quietly, thinking.

  What I was thinking was this:

  Something wasn’t right. These monsters – even the ones in the lead, the ones making all the decisions – were really thick. Most of them weren’t smart enough to count their own fingers – even the ones with no fingers. They just weren’t clever enough to have planned the invasion.

  So, who had?

  I must have dozed off.

  I was woken by a boot in my aching ribs and a heavy weight landing on me with a thump. Something small and hard bounced off my forehead and skidded across the carpet. I jerked myself awake, half-expecting to find some monster had crawled out from under the bed and caught me napping.

  It was worse than that.

  It was Clyde.

  He’d come rushing in and tripped right over me.

  “You idiot, Slater!” Clyde complained. “What’s the idea, lying there where any fool could trip over you?”

  “Yeah, well any fool just did,” I groaned, clutching my ribs. Across the room Cherry sat up blearily, woken by all the noise.

  “Well, if we could get on,” the PM said, “there’s the little business of a monster invasion to cope with. Clyde, as you’re the Minister for Monsters, I’d like your opinion on the monsters’ demands.”

  “Oh, yes,” Clyde said. He was trying to look grown-up and responsible, but he looked more like a little kid in the headteacher’s office trying to explain how come the dog ate his homework again. “Let’s see: they want power, they want darkness, and they want to eat children. Umm . . . pretty standard demands in these cases, really.”

  “In these cases?” I burst out. “What cases? Clyde, nothing like this has ever happened before and you know it!”

  Clyde scowled. “I’m the Minister, Slater,” he said uncomfortably. “You’re just an ex-Investigator. So shut up. As I was saying, Prime Minister, this is more or less what they ask for every time. The difference is – this time they have us surrounded.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, thinking of the skatebeds, “and whose fault is that?”

  Clyde went red and tried to pretend he hadn’t heard.

  “Now, I’ve – I’ve studied the situation from every angle, Prime Minister,” he stammered. “Those beds are light, but they’re strong. We could try blowing them up, but we might kill too many innocent people. We could try sending police officers to lift up the bedclothes and let in the light, but the monsters could probably grab them through the material and pull them under the bed. We might easily lose our entire police force that way, and still not solve the problem.”

  “Thank you, Clyde,” the Prime Minister cut in impatiently, “but a list of ideas that won’t work isn’t really what I had in mind. What I need from you right now is some advice as to how to defeat the monsters. Well? What should we do?”

  Clyde shuffled his feet and looked down at the carpet. Once more I was reminded of that kid who hadn’t done his homework. Then he spoke again, in a voice so small I could only just hear what he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Clyde,” the Prime Minister said quietly, “this is extremely serious. The monsters under the bed have us surrounded. They have given us until sunrise to agree to their demands. You know more about these creatures than I do. You’re my expert. Tell me what you think I should do.”

  Clyde didn’t look up. When he spoke this time, it was no more than a whisper.

  “Give up,” he said.

  There was a stunned silence, broken only by the sound of Clyde sniffing self-pityingly.

  “What?” the Prime Minister said.
>
  I can’t tell you how angry I was. “I don’t believe you, Clyde!” I yelled. “Yesterday it was, ‘When you get to my age, monsters under the bed are nothing to worry about,’ and now it’s, ‘Oh, we must all lie down and let them eat us!’ What’s wrong with you? What do you think you’re . . . you’re . . .?”

  My voice tailed off as I noticed something on the floor nearby. Something small and hard that Clyde must have dropped when he tripped over me. I reached out and picked it up.

  It was an I-Zak 750.

  The very latest must-have item for the kid who had too much already.

  The one that wasn’t in the shops yet.

  Because the prototype had been stolen from the inventor’s bedside.

  I looked at it, and felt the last piece of the puzzle click into place.

  I knew now who the brains behind the monster invasion was.

  It was Clyde.

  “You selfish, big-headed idiot, Clyde!” I roared, leaping to my feet and pushing him in the chest so that he staggered back.

  “Look, take it easy, Jack!” said the Prime Minister. “You may not like Clyde’s advice, but hey, really, we’re in a very difficult situation here. Some hard choices may have to be made, you know, and that’s not anybody’s fault.”

  “Yes it is!” I said. “It’s Clyde’s fault! All of this is Clyde’s fault! Because he planned this invasion! He’s working with the monsters!”

  Clyde went red.

  “You shouldn’t even be here!” he muttered. “Don’t you dare start accusing me! You don’t know anything about it!”

  “I know all about it!” I yelled at him, waving the I-Zak 750 in his face. “I know that this is yours! I know how you got one, when they won’t be in the shops for another six months! And I know what you gave them in return!”