The Curse of the Deadly 7

by Garth Jennings

  Nelson didn’t answer right away as the monsters were all talking.

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ he said eventually. ‘Puff says it was a light dose of sleeping gas and they’ll be awake soon.’

  ‘Good,’ she said as she threw her leg over the bike and settled into the saddle. ‘Oh, and I texted Mum. I said we were at Ivan’s watching a film and we’d be back as soon as it’s over.’

  Nelson grinned, and felt the rush of cold night air dry his teeth. It was a thrill to be part of a gang of secret heroes riding home on bicycles through the city at night. On top of having saved a gorilla, they carried with them the prospect of Pogo and Doody’s wedding. Nelson couldn’t stop smiling. Even with Hoot flying above them singing the worst version of ‘Man! I Feel Like a Woman!’ he had heard in his life, it was the best night ever.

  IT WAS THE WORST NIGHT EVER

  By the time they had returned to Ivan’s house they were exhausted, and their warm beds were calling to them. Spike had clearly followed Nelson’s instructions, as his flesh was now plump and green from drinking plenty of water, though he continued to gaze at the log burner, hypnotized by the flames. Nelson yawned, and all seven of his monsters yawned too.

  You need a haircut, signed Celeste to Ivan, who had just taken off his cycle helmet.

  He looked at his reflection in the window and nodded in agreement.

  I’ll do it tomorrow after school, signed Celeste, and then turned to Nelson. ‘When was the last time I cut your hair?’

  ‘Dunno?’ said Nelson with a shrug. He was distracted by the conversation his monsters were having about whether Stan should have the tips of his horns rounded to prevent accidents. ‘Shall we go home, Cel?’

  ‘Wait,’ said Celeste, and she put her hand on the back of Nelson’s neck. ‘That’s amazing. Your hair. It feels like I just cut it this second but it must be months since I did. It’s not grown even a tiny bit.’

  The monsters went from chattering to silence.

  ‘What?’ said Nelson. ‘Why have you all gone quiet?’

  The monsters did not answer. They bowed their heads and avoided looking Nelson in the eye.

  ‘What’s wrong, Nelse?’ asked Celeste.

  ‘I don’t know, but something is, and I’m waiting for them to tell me.’

  ‘Well?’ asked Nelson. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m not tellin’ him,’ growled Stan.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Puff.

  ‘Well, don’t look at me,’ said Hoot. ‘I don’t want to be the one to tell Nelson he’s cursed.’

  ‘Cursed? What do you mean, cursed?’ said Nelson. The monsters all groaned, except for Crush, who honked quietly.

  ‘Nice one, genius,’ said Stan to Hoot, who had only just realized his mistake.

  ‘Oh, great!’ wailed Spike. ‘That’s it. The fun’s over. Not that I had much fun.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Celeste, sensing that the atmosphere had changed.

  ‘Well, might as well get it over with now you’ve said it, Hoot.’ Spike turned to Nelson, took a deep breath, and said, ‘You’re cursed, Nelson, because . . . because, well, you can never grow up as long as you have us around. As long as you have monsters. That’s why your hair’s not been growing.’

  Nelson didn’t reply straight away. It was an awful lot to take in at once. Crush let out a little honk of support.

  ‘I can’t grow up?’ asked Nelson. His monsters nodded solemnly.

  ‘What, so this is it? Seriously, I’m stuck exactly like this forever? I won’t get any taller . . . or grow a beard or have a deeper voice or any of that stuff?’

  Celeste was startled by hearing this but knew better than to interrupt right now. Instead she squeezed her little brother’s shoulders. Ivan sat on a stool beside them, aware that something bad was happening.

  ‘Course ya gonna grow up. It’s just that you can’t do it with us around. So we ’ave to go,’ said Stan, his bottom lip quivering.

  ‘Go?’ said Nelson, his voice breaking. ‘But I don’t want you to go. And why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  The monsters began to wail and pace the room.

  ‘We knew this day would come; we just wanted to put it off for as long as possible,’ said Spike.

  ‘’Tis for the best. We must leave you,’ said Miser.

  ‘He’s right, Nelson,’ said Puff with a great sigh. ‘You can’t grow up . . . with a bunch of monsters hanging around you.’

  ‘Yes I can! I don’t want to change or grow up anyway. I hate beards! I want to stay like this. Besides, we’re connected,’ pleaded Nelson. ‘So it doesn’t matter where you go, we’ll always be connected. Right?’

  Celeste looked anxiously at Ivan, who held her hand as he watched Nelson’s side of the conversation.

  ‘We have to go somewhere that breaks that connection and never come back,’ said Spike with a weary shake of his head.

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘We must cease to exist,’ whispered Miser.

  ‘You mean you have to die.’ Nelson flinched. It was horrible to hear those words come out of his own mouth. The monsters shuddered as if a freezing breeze had swept over them.

  Nelson knew very well how hard it was to destroy a monster. It took being consumed by Earth Fire, or in other words a volcano, to do the job properly, and the idea of his monsters leaping to a fiery death made Nelson’s face crumple.

  Crush squeezed Nelson’s leg. Usually he could fill Nelson with warmth and love, but Crush was too sad to summon these feelings now.

  Celeste cuddled Nelson too, but it didn’t stop the tears spilling down his cheeks.

  ‘No, no, no! Don’t worry, Nelly-son,’ said Nosh between quiet little sobs of his own. ‘We not gonna jump in da volcano or die or nuffin’. We gotta plan!’

  ‘Then what? Where are you gonna go?’

  ‘Nosh is correct. We knew this day would come and planned accordingly. You may recall how we sought to contain Master Buzzard’s soul?’ said Miser.

  Nelson nodded. How could he forget? They had used a needle from the sin extractor, which had a tiny part of the man’s soul on its tip. Then they had contained it within a cuddly toy rhino, which had started to walk and talk and had been very grumpy indeed (just like Buzzard himself).

  ‘Well, we learned something from this experience. The same needles that extracted us from you, when turned upside down, can have the reverse effect. They draw us in.’

  Nelson could remember the night they had taken a needle from the sin extractor and how the monsters had been drawn to it – as if they were dust being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t understand.’ Nelson shook his head.

  ‘We believe – at least, we sincerely hope – that if a needle were to be inserted safely into your skin, it would draw us all back inside of you,’ explained Miser.

  ‘Not so bad, eh? It’ll just be like it was before we came along,’ said Puff, making an effort to smile.

  ‘But it was rubbish before you came along. I don’t want to go back to that. I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘You wanna tell me what’s going on now, Nelse?’ said Celeste, but Nelson couldn’t speak. His throat was clenched and tears were streaming down his cheeks.

  And as he cried the monsters howled. It was the saddest sound in the universe, though no one in the universe could hear it but Nelson.

  FETCH

  Nelson was supposed to be watching the 3D printer generate the plastic tree he had designed in his design technology class, but instead he was looking out of the window. The sun was shining on the sports field and the shadow of a fast-moving cloud whipped across it. Life at school was better than it had ever been: he had been enjoying some of the lessons, and the boys he played rugby with didn’t hate him any more. None of this concerned Nelson right now, though. All he could think about was the idea of losing his monsters, never seeing them again. Would he just feel sad for the rest of his life?

  One thing was for sure: he reall
y had stopped growing. It wasn’t just his hair, his whole body had stopped. Even his fingernails hadn’t grown back since he had bitten them months ago. He thought really hard about whether he could put up with staying the way he was now forever. How would it feel to watch everyone in his class grow up and leave him behind? To see them all turn into adults and do grown-up things while he remained a child?

  ‘It’s done. You can take it out now,’ said Katy Newman, one of Nelson’s classmates.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Nelson absent-mindedly, and he opened the cabinet. His boring plastic tree seemed unworthy of the brilliant 3D printer. It was like the best chef in the world saying they will make whatever you want and you asking them in reply for a piece of toast.

  ‘I’m putting on a play at the end of the year. We’re going to do Bugsy Malone,’ said Katy, but Nelson didn’t hear a word she said.

  The school cafeteria was filled with loud children pushing bad food around plastic plates. Nelson stared at his bowl of rice pudding.

  ‘Nosh would love this,’ he thought, stirring the gloopy pudding. If his monsters were successfully returned to his soul, would he feel them there? Would they be like voices inside his head? Might they be able to control him, or even talk to him? He couldn’t imagine life without them.

  Katy came to sit beside him. She had eaten her lunch and was finishing off her carton of apple juice.

  ‘So do you think your uncle could help us make the splurge guns?’

  Katy always did this. She would start a conversation with you as if you had been listening to the thoughts in her head prior to her speaking. It was always confusing and always annoying.

  ‘What?’ said Nelson.

  ‘The splurge guns. For my production of Bugsy Malone? You will be in it, won’t you?’

  Nelson let out a long ‘Ummmm’ in reply.

  ‘I can’t promise anything, but let’s just say I think you’d be perfect for Bugsy.’ Katy winked, which only served to confuse Nelson even more. He could remember the film, full of singing kids dressed as gangsters shooting each other with splurge guns, but he was finding it hard to concentrate.

  Katy reached the end of her apple juice with a loud shhhlurp!

  ‘So do you think your clever inventor uncle—’

  ‘My Uncle Pogo.’

  ‘Yes. Do you think he could help us make the guns that shoot out foam?’

  ‘Uhhh . . .’

  Nelson’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He quickly pulled it out and rejected the call, checking that none of the teachers had noticed.

  ‘Ooh, we’re not supposed to have phones on during school time,’ said Katy.

  Nelson knew this. He had forgotten to put his in his locker.

  ‘Weird. It was my Uncle Pogo.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a sign! It’s totally a sign! You have to ask him to do it now! Mmm. Apple juice. Are you going to drink that?’ Katy picked up Nelson’s carton of apple juice.

  ‘Um. No, that’s OK. You can have it,’ said Nelson, though she had already punctured the little foil hole with the straw before he had finished answering.

  Ping! A text had arrived from Uncle Pogo.

  Nelse. Swing by after school.

  Love, Pogo.

  ‘It’s your uncle, isn’t it? What does the message say?’ asked Katy eagerly, before popping the straw in her mouth and draining the carton of apple juice.

  ‘Uhh . . . just that I should visit him after school.’

  Katy slammed the empty carton on the table and clapped her hands, delighted to see everything going the way she wanted it.

  ‘Splurge guns,’ she said, jumping up from her seat and pointing her fingers like pistols at Nelson. ‘He has to make them for us. Beg him if you must. They are essential for my play.’

  And off she went, leaving Nelson feeling like he’d just stepped off a roller coaster.

  The school bell rang.

  Lunch break was over.

  It was time to go back to class.

  Nelson scraped the rice pudding into the bin and thought of his monsters. They would probably be sitting in Ivan’s workshop feeling the same as him. Gloomy. Confused. Scared.

  Nelson was right: his monsters were feeling the same as him.

  But they were not moping around in Ivan’s workshop.

  They had just arrived in a busy London street and were about to commit daylight robbery.

  BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

  Nelson’s monsters had become seasoned bus travellers from their time spent commuting between London Zoo and Nelson’s house.

  To avoid interacting with fellow commuters, they never rode inside, always on the roof. It was fairly easy to jump from the roof of a stationary bus on to the roof of a bus stop, and though the loud thuds sometimes startled people standing below, most of the time no one noticed due to their ears being plugged with headphones and their attention drawn to their mobile phones.

  ‘Everybody off!’ shouted Stan as the bus came to a stop outside the Museum of London.

  ‘Why do we have to do this now? Can’t we just put it off for a bit longer?’ groaned Spike.

  ‘Longer we leave it, worse it’s gonna be when it comes to saying goodbye to Nelson,’ snapped Stan. ‘We’ve ’ad good times, and now our time’s up, so let’s just get it over with.’

  ‘Awww . . . Being sad make me wanna eat somefing,’ said Nosh, grabbing his belly as it rumbled like a little thunderstorm.

  ‘Wait until we have completed the mission,’ hissed Miser, who was sliding down the side of the bus stop on to the pavement. ‘Once we have the needle you can reward yourself with any snack you choose.’

  ‘Can I have mangoes please? Dem mangoes is my best fav’rite,’ said Nosh eagerly. He had only just discovered mangoes a few days before and had nearly exploded with happiness at how delicious they were.

  ‘You can have all the mangoes you want. Now keep up.’

  The monsters took care to avoid bumping into the people walking towards the museum, and when they reached the ticket desk, Miser took a complimentary map.

  ‘This way,’ said Miser, and off they went, shuffling right past the museum guards.

  The delightful murmur of curious visitors, together with the beautifully lit exhibits, captivated the monsters, and for a short while they forgot all about their mission.

  ‘Ooooh,’ moaned Nosh, pointing to a large jawbone belonging to a woolly mammoth who had roamed the place where Trafalgar Square now stood.

  ‘Yikes,’ said Hoot, as they passed a dramatic painting depicting the Great Fire that consumed almost all of London in 1666.

  ‘Honk!’ honked Crush, pointing to a little pair of swimming trunks worn in the 2012 Olympics.

  ‘Keep up,’ growled Stan to Puff, who had slowed down and fallen behind. There was something about museums – the low-level lighting and the hum of human chatter – that made Puff feel even more sleepy than usual.

  ‘There it is,’ said Miser, pointing to the other side of the room, and the monsters bumbled to a stop. They were looking at a great display of all the inventions belonging to Sir Christopher Wren that Doody and Pogo had discovered at St Paul’s Cathedral and then tested together on their TV show. There were even two life-sized cardboard cut-outs of Pogo and Doody standing at the side of the exhibit. Among the exhibits was the sin extractor, and though visitors were peering closely at this device, it was contained within a clear plastic box to protect people from its rough metal edges and sharp needles.

  ‘Wait – did anyone bring something to keep a needle in once we steal it?’ said Spike.

  The monsters looked at each other for an answer. Clearly, none of them had thought of this.

  ‘Well, we have to contain it inside something. You know what happens when we touch those things.’

  ‘Oooh. What exactly does happen when we touch it?’ asked Hoot, only to be answered by a stern glare from the rest of the monsters.

  ‘Ah, I see I’ve annoyed you by asking that question, which leads me to
assume I’ve been told the answer before.’

  ‘Correct,’ hissed Miser.

  ‘I knew it!’ said Hoot triumphantly.

  ‘Crush, go and find somefing to keep the needle in once we nick it,’ said Stan.

  ‘HONK! HONK!’ said Crush, scampering away at top speed.

  ‘And how exactly do we “nick” it? I mean, there’s people everywhere and it’s trapped inside that glass case,’ said Spike.

  ‘Easy. Shove everyone out the way, smash it open, steal the needle, job done,’ said Stan while cracking his knuckles. The other monsters erupted in protest.

  ‘No, no, no, no, Stan! We must take more care,’ hissed Miser.

  ‘All right. Who’s got a better plan then?’

  The monsters fell silent as they considered the question.

  ‘Well?’ said Stan, his arms folded across his chest, his right hoof tapping impatiently.

  The monsters thought as hard as they could, scratching their heads and pacing the corner of the room.

  ‘So? Ideas? Anyone? Eh?’ Stan was becoming more irritated and more impatient with every passing second. Of all the monsters, he feared saying goodbye to Nelson the most, and his fear had made him more anxious than a bee in a jar.

  ‘We could set off the fire alarm, right? Clear the room of people first,’ suggested Puff.

  ‘LET’S JUST DO IT!!’ roared Stan, before turning and smashing his fist into the panel of light switches on the wall. There was a loud bang, sparks flew from the panel, and the entire room was plunged into darkness. The visitors responded with shouts of surprise.

  ‘Whatcha do dat for?’ exclaimed Nosh.

  ‘He’s flipped out,’ said Spike.

  ‘My plan, my rules,’ said Stan, who set off through the panicked visitors towards the sin extractor. He was so afraid of the pain he would feel when having to say goodbye to Nelson that he just wanted it over with as quickly as possible. The other monsters chased after him. ‘Besides, creates a distraction, dunnit?’ shouted Stan.

  ‘Stan! You are not thinking clearly,’ shouted Miser as he dodged an elderly couple stumbling towards the exit.