Jay, Lizzie and the Tale of the Stairs
Page 46
Chapter 47
Inside the Junction Sphere
What I didn’t expect was nothing at all. I felt nothing, absolutely nothing. There was a bright flash of orange as we passed through the outer wall but, apart from that, we found ourselves on the inside of the J-Sphere.
Or, to be more precise, we were stood in my kitchen in the 21st century.
I couldn’t believe it. It had seemed like a million years since I had last been here. I looked around. There was no mess. Nothing was out of place. It was clear that it was dark outside as the kitchen was gloomy and Dad had left a light on under one of the kitchen cabinets and there was a half-finished mug of tea on the kitchen table. I still held onto a bemused, confused Rosie still holding the grenade out in front of her.
I pushed her arms down and made sure that she held the grenade tightly.
Suddenly current events came crowding in and I looked back the way we had come. Behind us stood the patio doors, but instead of glass and plastic the doors had become a multi-coloured wall. Moving. Swaying. It reminded me of the surface of the sea but stood up on its end. We stood watching for a little while, hypnotised by its gentle swaying. For a moment we completely forgot what we were supposed to do. How we were meant to somehow destroy this thing. But it was so beautiful, so unique. Was it that important to kill it?
The answer came quickly.
The wall began to bulge at a point near its middle. Pretty soon a football sized balloon had appeared. As we watched the bulge got bigger and bigger. I raised the machine gun and stepped away. Rosie skittered behind the kitchen table. Then the balloon burst sending orange sparks bounding into the kitchen leaving a large head poking through. It had no eyes. No mouth. No nose or ears. Just waved pointlessly like one of those weeds at the bottom of the ocean. Suddenly, another head. Something like the wing of a bat. The squeal of a pig.
This was becoming too crazy. My horror turned quickly to disgust. I aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger. The big balloon head bled red blood from the holes I made in it and it disappeared but others were trying to get in as half a pig appeared. Several more heads. Arms. Legs. I’m sure a saw a nurse holding a clipboard and heard the steady bleep of a hospital monitor.
The voice of Beth – ‘I wouldn’t be paid to live on shoddy Shad Hill!’
And Kyle, waving goodbye.
All my worst fears mixed together, moulded into one.
“Rosie!” I shouted in panic. “The grenade! Now!”
Rosie was huddled and terrified under the kitchen cabinet and her eyes, frightened, mouse-like, were pleading with me to make it all stop.
That’s when I saw a tentacle, as thick as my body, snaking towards her ankle. Before I could shout a warning it had her, had curled around the area above her shoe. It was pulling her back towards the J-Sphere and what lay beyond.
I pointed the gun at the slapping, green thing that belonged to who knows what, well clear of Rosie’s leg, and pulled the trigger.
Click!
Nothing. A jam maybe. I tried again.
Click!
Click!
The gun was empty. I let the gun drop to the kitchen floor. Despite what was coming through the Sphere I rushed to Rosie and scrabbled to find the grenade.
“Rosie,” I spluttered, “where’s the grenade. Where’s the bloody grenade?”
Then I had it. Nearly dropped it. Held it tightly and ducked back out from under the kitchen table. The moaning was getting louder and louder and I really didn’t want to look too closely at what was coming through the wall of what had become black and orange and ruby reds. I just wanted to get rid of them. To make them stop. I held up the grenade. I’d seen them used in films. You just put a finger in the ring and pull the pin.
Don’t you?
In films that is.
Just pull the pin.
So that’s what I did.
It came away after a hefty tug and for a second or two I was jammed with fear and unable to move. I had to get rid of it so I lobbed it at the wall of nightmares, back into the Junction-Sphere and back to where it had been made.