The Curse of the Deadly 7

by Garth Jennings

  ‘All right, folks! How we doing out there?’ Doody had leaped on to the stage and grabbed the microphone, his big toothy grin wider than ever before. Everyone turned and cheered.

  ‘Fancy a bit o’ line dancin’ then?’

  The guests cheered again.

  ‘Well, give it up for Rodeo Jones and his Wild Horses!’ Four musicians dressed for the Wild West took to the stage: a drummer, a violinist, a double bass player, and a singer with two large front teeth and a greased centre parting, who took hold of the mic.

  ‘I’m Rodeo Jones and this here is my band, the Wild Horses!’ It was without doubt the most unconvincing American accent anyone had ever heard. The band began to play an infectious country rhythm, and Rodeo Jones began to sing instructions to the guests while slapping his thigh.

  ‘Get in line, get in line. Ladies left, fellas right. Step to the beat now, one, two, three . . .’

  He may have had an awful American accent, but Rodeo Jones had an incredible power over the crowd. Within seconds he had divided the room into two rows of dancers who obeyed his every word.

  ‘Face your partner! Right hand up! Take their hand and round ya go!’

  It worked! Everyone was dancing perfectly together. Celeste and Ivan could not stop laughing as they spun around, and even Uncle Pogo with his false leg was able to swing Doody around in time with the music. There was a smile on every face except Nelson’s. He had managed to dodge his mother, for she would have insisted he join in, and he hid in a corner by the food table. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to join in, he just couldn’t. Everyone else was having so much fun, but he didn’t know how he felt. One minute he was tired, the next he was angry, then he was hungry and eating everything he could get his hands on. Looking past his uncles on the stage he could see Admiral Nelson’s tomb. This is where it had started for our Nelson: camping out in the crypt of St Paul’s on the night of the storm. It was here, as he lay asleep in a tent constructed by his Uncle Pogo, that his monsters had been born.

  Nelson found himself looking down at his reflection in an empty silver drinks tray. He didn’t like the way he looked. He wanted to change his hair. His shirt collar was too big and made his neck look too thin. He bared his teeth and thought they looked crooked and embarrassing.

  ‘What am I doing?’ said Nelson out loud, though everyone else was too busy dancing to hear him. He had never in his life cared what he looked like, and now he saw his face as a collection of flaws and defects.

  Grabbing a lemonade and scoffing a handful of salted peanuts, Nelson snuck out through the door and climbed the stairs leading to the ground-floor exit.

  The sunshine caught him by surprise, but when Nelson put up his hand to shield his eyes, the sun shone straight through.

  Not just through the gaps in his fingers. Right through his skin and bone, as if he were made of glass.

  GEORGE OF THE TRAMPOLINE

  George had stayed out in his garden all morning. He hated being in the house when his father was watching the horse racing. The sound of the TV commentators yelling stupid horse names, and the way his father got so excited that white spit would gather in the corners of his mouth, made George feel queasy, so instead he sat outside on his trampoline looking at his bare feet. For the last few days he had been trying to make his toes separate by themselves. His left foot was quite obliging, but for some reason the toes on his right foot required Jedi-like concentration to get them to even budge. ‘How come you lot are so tricky?’ asked George of his toes. He tried again, pursing his lips, scrunching his nose and narrowing his eyes, when suddenly the house next door exploded.

  George covered his head with his hands and screamed, but he could not be heard over the thundering roar of bricks and cement and glass crashing into next door’s garden.

  ‘What have you done?!’ cried George’s dad as he ran out of the back door.

  ‘I didn’t do anything! Their house just fell down,’ said George weakly while pointing to the remains of Nelson’s home. It reminded George of the doll’s houses he had seen at the Museum of Childhood. Those old Victorian toys were often displayed without their fronts so that you could see all the rooms on different levels inside, and it was the same for Nelson’s house. George could clearly see the kitchen and the living room, while upstairs half of the bathroom was still there, as well as the landing area and a bit of the bedroom on the other side. Minty the dog ran out of the remains of the kitchen, covered in dust, and began barking angrily back at the house for waking her up.

  ‘Good God, Jerry! What just happened?’ George’s mother had joined her husband in the garden.

  ‘Look at that,’ said George’s father. ‘Gas leak or something?’

  ‘Oh! Lucky they were all out at the wedding. Call the police,’ said George’s mother and they both ran inside, leaving George on his trampoline. He could taste the dust in air. It was chalky, and it was weird to think that he was probably eating tiny particles that had once been a chair or a television, or even a toilet. George looked down at his feet and saw that a great deal of dust had collected in the dip he had made by sitting in the middle of the trampoline. He stood and brushed himself down, and when he looked back at the house he saw a bare-chested man smeared with black soot standing in what used to be his neighbours’ upstairs bathroom.

  George’s mouth fell open. Seeing a house explode would be a pretty big surprise for anyone, but for some reason the sight of this stranger was even more shocking. He felt his heart race and his skin bristle with goosebumps. It was lucky for George that he could not see the army of hideous monsters that were also standing in the ruins of Nelson’s house.

  ‘Take me to that boy over there,’ said the man angrily, and one of his yellow bird-like monsters crouched before him, allowing him to climb on its back.

  George gasped at the sight of the stranger flying towards him, apparently unaided, but gasping made George’s lungs fill with dust and he began to cough violently.

  ‘Do you know where Nelson Green is?’

  George was coughing too much to see the man talking to him, let alone answer him.

  ‘Answer me! Do you know where Nelson Green is?’ snapped the man.

  George was still gasping for air when he looked up to see the man standing on his garden wall, glaring down at him.

  ‘Wh-who are you?’ stammered George.

  ‘I asked you where Nelson Green is. So? Where is he? Do you know or not?’ said Jim (because of course that’s who it was), his anger rising with every word.

  What George should have done was say he didn’t know where Nelson was – or maybe even a shrug would have done it – but instead George made the mistake of saying, ‘I’m not telling you.’

  It was proof he knew exactly where Nelson was – and why one of Jim’s cactus-shaped monsters stepped forward, plucked a needle from its own green flesh and jammed it right between George’s eyes.

  Don’t worry, George didn’t feel any pain. He was suddenly empty of all thought or self-awareness, which was good because he could now see the monsters and hear what they were saying, and if he had been conscious he might have died of fright.

  ‘Now, tell our master where Nelson Green is,’ hissed the horrible green monster, its veiny red eyes bulging so violently it looked as if they were about to fall out of their sockets.

  Jim had never seen what his green monsters could do with their needles, and he watched, fascinated, as they extracted the truth from the little boy.

  ‘He’s gone to the wedding,’ said George in a dreamy monotone voice.

  ‘What wedding?’ snapped the green monster.

  ‘The wedding for the men who are getting married. I wanted to go too but I wasn’t invi—’

  ‘Just tell us where it is,’ butted in the monster.

  ‘I never get invited to parties. Ever since I did a wee on a bouncy castle at Jane Collins’s birthday party.’

  ‘Again! We do not care about any of this – just give us the location.’

&nb
sp; ‘It wasn’t my fault, I’d had loads of orange juice and—’

  ‘Give me strength!’ wailed the green monster. ‘WHERE IS NELSON GREEN?’ it screamed, and this time George seemed to shudder as if some trace of fear had found its way past the numbness of the needle sticking out of his head. There was a moment of silence as George swallowed before speaking.

  ‘St Paul’s Cathedral,’ said George before the cactus needle was plucked from his head and he collapsed back on to the trampoline.

  TRANSFORMER

  Nelson felt his stomach lurch, and panic take hold, as he lowered his hand and saw that it was ghostlike. While the sleeve of his shirt remained solid, his hand was slowly fading away. He could still feel his fingers, but they were becoming translucent. The same thing was happening to his other hand.

  Nelson looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. He was standing in a small garden area at the back of St Paul’s, and through the iron fence he could see tourists walking by and taking pictures of the great dome.

  I’ve gotta hide before anyone sees me, thought Nelson, and he crouched behind a small bush, took a deep breath, pushed up his sleeves and found he could see right through his arm to the bush behind.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Nelson out loud, but it wasn’t his voice. It was deeper and raspier than usual. ‘What’s happening to me? What’s happened to my voice?’ He didn’t sound like himself at all. In fact, he sounded like a monster. ‘Side effects,’ he growled, remembering the note his monsters had left him. ‘I knew it. I knew something was wrong. Oh, those idiots! They haven’t cured me of the curse; they’ve made a total mess of me!’

  Riiiiiiiip! Nelson looked down at his shirt sleeves bursting open.

  His translucent arms were suddenly flooded with colour, ketchup red, and his hands ballooned into great puffy fists.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Nelson in his new gravelly voice. ‘Ow! Oww! OW!’ he cried as a horn curled up and out of either side of his head, but no one could hear him or see him, even though people were everywhere. Like his monsters, Nelson was now not only invisible but also inaudible to normal human beings. The tourists walking by weren’t reacting to him at all – they would only have been able to see his clothes, but even they were disappearing, ripped to shreds as his body transformed. Nelson grabbed his stomach and felt it bulge like a water-filled balloon over his legs. It was so heavy he fell forward on to the grass. His legs twitched behind him and, looking back, Nelson saw a wave of purple fur burst through his jeans and ripple right down to his ankles, where, instead of two feet, two purple paws popped through his sneakers and sprouted sharp yellow claws.

  ‘Oooh nooo!’ howled Nelson as he rolled on to his back and covered his eyes with his great fists.

  ‘OW!’ he yelled, as pain shot through his fingers. He opened his eyes to see his chubby red hands now covered in cactus needles. ‘Youchy!’ He shook his hands and the needles flew away.

  ‘What’s happened to my face?’ he croaked as he tentatively reached up to touch his cheeks. Needles pricked his fingers, and at once he recognized the feel of cactus flesh. The changes came quicker and quicker. His lips expanded, and a great purple tongue flopped out on to his green cheek. Nostrils that used to be so narrow now flared wide, sucking up air like two vacuum cleaners. His spine cracked and clicked and clacked as it grew longer to accommodate a new, taller body, while his ribs bowed and expanded and two more hands appeared from his sides, stretching away from his body on bendy orange arms. Something was pushing at his upper and lower back at the same time, and with such force that Nelson flipped on to his side. With a whip-like crack, a long, blue, rubbery tail shot out from the base of his spine, and at the end of the tail, little rubbery fingers flexed, while between his shoulder blades two little yellow wings unfurled. The transformation was complete and the pain stopped. Nelson didn’t need a mirror to know exactly what he had become: a squished-up mega-mix of his seven monsters.

  ‘Nightmare,’ growled Nelson.

  Nelson’s clothes and shoes lay shredded all around him. He looked down at his purple paws and the claws slid out. They looked dangerously sharp.

  ‘Well, Puff, I’ve got your legs and feet now,’ said Nelson, as if Puff were right there. ‘Don’t tell me I have your farts too?’

  The fists and the horns were certainly from Stan, and the orange arms from Crush. ‘How am I doing this?’ mumbled Nelson to himself as he made the little rubbery hand on the end of his blue tail wave. He couldn’t understand how he was able to control all these new body parts that until a few seconds ago had never existed. Just thinking about the wings on his back made them flex and stretch as if ready for lift-off.

  A great cheer came from inside the party, and Nelson looked back at the door, which was covered in an arch made of balloons. Back in the crypt, Doody and Pogo’s guests were laughing and enjoying the food, while on the opposite side of the iron fence, tourists were gathering to tour the cathedral. No one could see the monster that was Nelson Green.

  What to do next was a very big question. He needed help. Celeste! But she wouldn’t be able to see him, so how . . . ? Maybe if he covered his hands in mud he could use sign language. But what would he say? ‘Hey, Cel, look! I’m a monster now’? The realization that this might be how he would spend the rest of his life made him roar with anger.

  ‘AAAAAAAARGH!’ Tears rained from his eyes and ran down his prickly green cheeks. Those stupid monsters. Why didn’t they at least test their idea before trying it out on him? Now they were gone for good, and he would spend the rest of his life as a freaky cocktail of them all, invisible to everyone. He would be like a missing person. His mother would die of heartbreak, for sure. The whole point was to stop the curse, and now he was more cursed than ever before.

  ‘AAAAAARGH!’ he roared again, but no one heard except for the pigeons, who were terrified and flew away, never to return.

  He felt shame and anger and sadness, but above all, Nelson felt hungry. The smell of onions coming from a food stall nearby was not just making his mouth water; it was making his stomach groan louder than a teenager who has been told to clean their room. Nelson licked his lips at the thought of eating a hamburger or five, and his tongue discovered a new set of teeth that were big, rough and full of gaps wide enough to fit a banana. A rumble as deep as an earthquake began to shake the bushes. Nelson pressed one of his four hands against his stomach, thinking that might be the cause of the tremor, but looking around, he could see the whole area was vibrating. The bus stop and the lamp posts shook as the sound grew louder and louder. Somewhere close by, a woman screamed, and Nelson looked up to see a sight even more strange and terrifying than his own transformed body: a great cloud of monsters flying down the street. Twenty-three of the bird-like creatures were carrying the rest of Jim’s army beneath them, and when they reached the steps of St Paul’s they dropped to the ground. No one in the street could see them, but everyone saw the cathedral doors being blown apart.

  NELSON GREEN V. THE UGLY ARMY

  Tourists and tour guides and priests ran for their lives as what appeared to them to be invisible forces sent the pews flying in all directions. The only person who wasn’t running anywhere was Jim Tindle, who was lowered to the ground by his flying monsters.

  ‘That’s where they are!’ cried Jim, pointing at a doorway covered in an arch of balloons and roped off with a sign saying:

  CRYPT CLOSED FOR PRIVATE EVENT

  The wedding guests were in the midst of dancing to a country-and-western version of ‘Kids in America’, performed by Doody, Pogo and the wedding band, when an enormous blast knocked them all to the floor. Screams and cries and coughing could be heard in every part of the room as a dust cloud engulfed the crypt. The guests couldn’t see each other – and they certainly couldn’t see the monster army standing in the hole where the exit used to be.

  Jim Tindle waited for the dust to settle before stepping inside.

  ‘Quiet!’ Jim shouted above the mayhem. ‘I said quiet!’ scre
eched Jim again, but no one could hear him over the panicked screams. ‘Do something,’ muttered Jim to his army. One of the largest of the red-horned monsters picked Jim up and held him above his head.

  One by one, the party guests fell silent at the sight of Jim Tindle floating in mid-air.

  ‘Finally,’ said Jim. ‘I thought you would never shut up.’

  Pogo and Doody stood up together, their arms still linked from dancing.

  ‘Who are heck are you?’ shouted Doody angrily, and Pogo squeezed his arm fearfully. Jim ignored the question.

  ‘I’m looking for Nelson Green.’

  The room broke out into fearful whispers, and once again Jim became angry.

  ‘SHUT UP!’

  The crowd instantly did as they were told. Jim’s greedy monsters were already walking among them, their rubbery blue arms snaking around the room while their little hands plucked wallets and jewellery from the unsuspecting guests.

  ‘Please do not make me shout again. You will listen to me and you will answer my question, is that understood?’

  Silence.

  ‘IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?’ yelled Jim Tindle, and every guest in the room cried ‘Yes!’

  Pogo and Doody were on the stage, peering over a speaker at Jim.

  ‘Don’t tell me this is one of your old boyfriends?’ whispered Doody. Pogo shook his head to say this was no time for bad jokes.

  ‘What was that?’ whispered Pogo as something brushed past him. He had no idea it was the hand of a blue monster, searching his pockets for valuables. Pogo looked down at his false leg and saw the compartment in which he kept his mints pop open.

  ‘Something just touched my leg.’