‘What are they?’ asked Kyle, looking terrified and sick. The first to come near him he backed away from. The second he kicked. The third he stamped out. It vanished with a weak, wet splat as if he’d pricked a hole in a flabby plum. All that remained was a flat bag of skin and a dash of red colouring that distinguished the creature’s simple mouth parts from the rest of its otherwise colourless body.
‘They’re mites,’ Ralph said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’ From somewhere in the back of his brain he recalled the frightening statistic that up to half the weight of an old pillow or cushion could be attributed to these normally harmless, microscopic creatures. If the cushion exploded there were going to be thousands of them in the room. Thousands. Growing larger. They had to run.
‘Neville, come on,’ Ralph shouted out loud, as the carpenter stood there, bewildered and shocked. The mites were swarming around his legs and beginning to scuttle up as high as his knees. Ralph snatched up a piece of wood and swept a small corridor through their ranks, sending dozens of the creatures crashing aside.
‘Let’s go!’ he screamed, tugging Neville’s shirt.
‘W-what about t’professor?’ Neville stammered fearfully, abandoning his saw to the still-swelling cushion. He came back towards the door, beating mites off the hem of his apron, squashing them in his pockets, shaking them out of the turn-ups of his trousers.
Ralph looked towards the corner where the old man had been. It was fat with cushion. The mad professor of particle physics was lost behind the ruin of his own invention. All he could hope for was a pocket of air. And maybe, after his attempt at treachery, that was all he deserved. ‘No chance,’ Ralph yelled, shaking his head.
‘Can you stop them growing bigger?’ Neville said, dancing through the horde as the tide grew stronger and a wave of mites peeled away to scale the walls and pour into the chimney breast and scuttle towards the windows. If something wasn’t done to block them off soon, they would be all through the house, Ralph realised. He looked towards the corner again. The mites were teeming there already, but through the swelling bubble-pack of fat little bodies, a faint green pulse could still be detected. The device, the cause of so much anguish, was under that heaving mass.
Impulse drove Ralph forward. Brave or stupid? There wasn’t time to tell. He simply plunged his hand through the sea of mites in front of him, grabbed the device and yanked it clear. A cloud of mites fell free, but one glued its sticky, hairy legs onto his arm. It was the size of his fist – and still growing. Ralph watched it dip its head and remembered, in horror, that creatures such as this fed on the flaked, dead skin of humans. Its mouth parts opened. A thin proboscis emerged. Ralph screamed and smacked his hand against the wall. With a splat, the mite burst. A wet stain made the chalk marks run.
Kyle yanked him through the door, slammed it to and locked it, killing any mites that had scuttled through with them. No one argued as they clattered down the stairs, into the crumbling belly of the house.
On the landing they were met by Wally, running up. ‘What’s happening? Did it work? Where’s the professor?’
‘Eaten alive, with any luck,’ said Kyle.
Panting, Neville explained the situation. ‘We need t’get everyone alerted. There’s—’
He broke off, hearing a girl’s shrill scream.
‘Trouble at t’mill,’ said Kyle, filling in.
Together, they dashed into the miniones’ room. To Ralph’s horror, mites were dropping down the chimney stack and flowing across the open floorboards. Jemima was fixed in a corner with Sam, who was using a scouring pad as a shield to hold the oncoming tide at bay. It was a hopeless task. The creatures, some as large as ankle-height, were dropping through the windows and gaps in the brickwork and using each other as stepping stones to form a bulging, foaming mass. Even Kyle Salter didn’t need a calculator to work out that Sam would soon be outnumbered.
‘Jem, hold on!’ he cried, and dived in amongst the mites, flashing his spear with gladiatorial bravery and pounding his feet like a child let loose in a paddling pool.
In that moment, Ralph learnt three things about Kyle. First, his heart was not as black as he liked to make out. Two, he had a soft spot for Jemima Culvery. Three, he was going to die unless more miniones went to his aid.
Neville ploughed in. So too, Wally.
‘Ralph, bring help!’ they shouted.
But Ralph was working on a plan of his own. As the house shook again under yet another gale-force pounding from Miriam, as ceilings broke and walls collapsed and plaster and masonry rained down around him, Ralph studied the apparatus in his hands. It was still ‘switched on’, still faintly humming and the aerial still radiated a pale, green light.
He weighed up the odds. They were not good. In his opinion, the mites were continuing to grow because the device was set, inadvertently, for that purpose. But why hadn’t they shot up in size? Was it because the weight of their numbers had stretched the signal far too wide? Or maybe the stone wasn’t charged up enough? Or maybe his unevolved, imperfect brain wasn’t up to the level of particle physics. He looked at the bottle top dials. If he turned them and the growth rate of the mites increased, the miniones could die a horrible death. Then again, there was an equal chance that the creatures might return to their microscopic state.
Left or right?
Decrease or increase?
Death or life?
He closed his eyes, changed his mind and pulled the peg instead. The gadget buzzed and Ralph thought he felt an energy surge burst out from it, though what effect it had had he couldn’t tell. But when he opened his eyes, the whirling vortex of light from the aerial was wavering towards the same shade of red he had seen in the tower room just before he’d stopped the professor swapping places with Jack.
Suddenly, an idea slapped him in the face. What if…?
‘Oi!’ Kyle Salter’s angry voice retuned Ralph’s eardrums to a pitch above soprano. Kyle was at the door, with Jemima (who appeared to have fainted with shock) slung over his shoulder and a dead mite hanging off the end of his spear. Behind him, Neville, Sam and Wally were baiting the mites with pieces of sugar bead, trying to distract them away from the humans.
‘Can’t hold them!’ Neville shouted. ‘And…oh, help us. The nearest ones to me are getting bigger.’
Ralph gulped. Was that the surge he’d felt?
‘Perfect, move it!’ Kyle growled.
Ralph turned immediately to run down the landing, only to see his way blocked off by a mite so large it could have swallowed him whole. His heart thudded. His thighs jellied. The group turned the other way. And there was another bloated beast.
Kyle looked over the banister rail. Some twenty feet below, the hall was littered with perilous rubble. ‘Gonna jump,’ he said to Wally. ‘Drop Jem to me.’ He slid the girl off his shoulder.
‘It’s suicide,’ said Wally, looking aghast. ‘You’ll break every bone you’ve got.’
‘Got a better plan, have you?’ Kyle was saying when the mite nearest Ralph reared up like a horse, kicking and wriggling its short front legs.
To his everlasting shame, Ralph screamed in terror, thinking he was about to be leapt on and consumed. But instead, the creature’s flanks began to shrivel and it suddenly imploded like a punctured airship. As it disappeared to nothing but skin and steam, Ralph saw the reason for its termination. Tom Jenks was on the landing, brandishing two torches.
‘Heat,’ he said, through a badly-cut lip. ‘They’re just big bags of water, that’s all.’ He threw a torch to Wally, who promptly dispatched the other large mite and set about forcing the rest of them back.
Ralph hurried to the plumber’s side. ‘I thought you were dead,’ he whispered.
Tom smiled and showed him a large chest bandage. ‘Your mum’s a good nurse. Come on, she’s waiting. We need to regroup in a safe room downstairs.’
But just when it seemed that the group would at last be united again, another projectile struck the trestle table and this
time, the outcome was catastrophic. Miriam was still at her devastating worst and, if anything, was growing more volatile. It was a planter that did the damage. A large, heavy flower pot that should, by rights, have been outside, not in. Annie had always kept it in the bay where her range of green ferns could appreciate the early-afternoon sunlight. The ferns and their earth had been long-since scattered when the pot had fallen over in the first round of mayhem. For a while, it had lain inert, just bumping up against the corner of The Frisker. But when Miriam had set that machine in motion the pot had jiggled free to roll where it liked. When it whacked the front leg of the wonky trestle table, the leg bent at the knee and the fish tank slid. It skated off the table at an angle of precisely forty-three degrees. In less than two-tenths of a second, one corner had speared a bare patch of floor and the tank had come to rest the correct way up. Remarkably, not a millimetre of glass was broken.
The same could not be said for the house called Miniville.
The impact with the side of the tank as it slid, then with the bottom as it flattened out, jarred every brick and beam and slate. The tower room crumbled in on itself and the whole of the west wall buckled with the ease of a domino falling, tilting the house into a precarious slant.
Ralph was one of the lucky ones. He escaped the quake with nothing more than brick dust stinging his eyes and a playground gash just below his left knee. In his hands, he still had the professor’s device.
The situation was critical. People were screaming in fear and pain. He knew, now, there would be no way to contain the mites. And one more hit from Miriam might be fatal.
So he made his choice. He made it out of bitterness and anger and frustration and love for his mother and pride for the group. He did not consult the adults or stop to think twice. For, in his view, only one option remained. Trawling his memory for every last scrap of information, he recreated the professor’s last movements with the device, working the buttons and moving the peg until the vortex of light had built to a blinding shade of red.
‘Touch the red pyramid,’ he said through his teeth, rocking back and forth and willing Jack to hear him. The only way he could save his mother and his friends – and hopefully (please, God) calm Miriam down – was to do what Ambrose Collonges had wished for, and swap places with Jack.
‘Touch it. Touch it. Touch it!’ he yelled.
Whoosh! With that same awful, dragging sensation he’d felt when he’d first arrived in Miniville, his wish was suddenly granted. Skin and bones grew large again and he landed with a thump on the floor of Annie’s lounge. Despite being dizzy with nausea, he was able to detect a cold circle of steel around his wrist. He jiggled his arm and felt the weight of his ‘hostage’. Yes. He’d done it. He’d made the swap.
‘Inspector, it’s me,’ he panted.
And a voice slurred back, ‘Roll up, do.’
Terror clamped Ralph’s heart.
He was handcuffed to Jack.
A Surprise Return
For a few seconds, both parties experienced a fuddled kind of truce as they tried to work out how this had come about. Here they were, taking shelter beside The Frisker, trying to avoid being hit by flying objects, bound to each other by a cold, steel bracelet. Ralph looked at Jack’s wrist and saw straight away that the watch had been removed. Bone must have taken it. So Bone had pressed the pyramid. Therefore, Bone was now in Miniville. Oops. Jack, in turn, still puddled by his pummelling, checked for his watch and gave a shocked start – gone! He glared at the handcuffs and then at Ralph and possibly wondered why it was that policemen looked so much younger these days. Then his grey eyes fell upon the device made of clothes pegs and mirrors and pins, and that fairground organ he laughingly called a brain began to grind out an explanatory tune. ‘Meddlesome brat from house next door. Empty fridge. Stolen stone. Contact with Collonges. New device. Escape.’
His eyes met Ralph’s for a nanosecond.
Then the pair of them started to wrestle.
It was a bizarre sight, a grown man of forty and a boy of twelve grappling for control of a mad professor’s miniaturising gadget.
‘Gimme that,’ snarled Jack, tugging it towards him.
The device buzzed. Ralph pulled it back.
‘I’d rather die, Bilt!’
‘Git up, Knocker. Nip him!’
Knocker got up, carrying his broom handle fetched from the tank, pathetically in his jaws.
Somewhere out of sight and out of doors, thunder rumbled and a flash of blue lightning gorged the plastic sheets at the windows. Something was coming. Something bad.
‘Miriam!’ Ralph yelled, wondering why the ghost hadn’t come to his aid. She had calmed down suddenly and he sensed she’d left the room. But why?
‘Oo’s Miriam?’ said Jack, sinking his yellow teeth into Ralph’s wrist.
‘Agh!’ the boy screamed and kicked Jack in the crotch.
‘Ooh,’ went the builder, curling up. He jabbed his elbow into Ralph’s chest.
Winded, Ralph nearly let go of the device. It responded with a warning beep.
‘Miriam! Miriam! Help me! It’s Rafe! Stop the ogre or we’re all going to die!’
Another luminescent flash of lightning gripped the room.
And then a woman’s voice said, ‘Is there anybody there?’
The tug-of-war came to an instant halt. ‘Oo’s that?’ hissed Jack.
Ralph wasn’t sure. She was in the hall, just out of sight. There was something very eerie about the way she’d asked the question. She’d used a deep, theatrical tone as if she were an actress rehearsing her lines, performing to the echoes in the auditorium, calling out to the shadows left behind in the seats.
‘Don’t be afraid. Show yourself,’ she said. The words floated through the doorway and hung in the air like a magic spell.
The blue sheets at the windows billowed.
Knocker whined in fear and dropped his wooden leg at Jack’s side.
Thunder cracked.
And in the flash which followed, Miriam’s body briefly materialised.
‘Bloomin’ Nora,’ Jack said.
This time, the visiting woman heard him.
‘Mr Bilt?’ she inquired, with a twitter of apology. She tapped faintly at the door but still didn’t enter. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I let myself in. The spare key is still in the plant pot out front.’
Ralph let out a shocked gasp, hardly able to believe who it was. A pair of elderly, brown-stockinged legs in a pair of elderly, black brogue shoes were just becoming visible when crack! something broke against the side of his neck and he sagged forward like an unstuffed teddy.
H-row? went Knocker as that half of his leg that was not in Jack’s hand went spinning over the back of the sofa.
‘Fetch,’ Jack said, cruelly pushing the terrier aside.
Knocker snapped his teeth and tried to bite, but the movement only unbalanced him again and he rolled over in a sad, lopsided heap, just as Annie Birdlees stepped into full view.
She brought a cross on a silver chain up to her mouth and tottered through the room, looking horrified. ‘Mr Bilt. Goodness me. What’s happening here? I sensed a troubled presence the moment I arrived and…oh, why is Ralph in a set of handcuffs?’
Jack showed her his best banana-mouthed grin. ‘Citizen’s arrest. Boy’s a menace. Broke in through the cellar. Attacked the dog. Rizzled up a spook and did for the furnishings. Tried to steal me gadget—’ He moved the device from Ralph’s lap to his, then paused, as something squished in his pocket. ‘—and me dead prannies. Had no choice but to knock him out and take back what’s legally mine.’
Annie shook her head in disbelief. ‘No, not Ralph.’
‘He’s a villain,’ said Jack. ‘Wants locking up.’ He tugged at the handcuffs. ‘Can’t be nmph trusted.’
‘That’s ridiculous. I shall go to his mother this instant.’
‘Wouldn’t bother,’ said Jack. ‘Ran away with a plumber. Terrible business. Turned the boy to crime.’
&
nbsp; ‘Poppycock!’ Mrs Birdlees said. ‘There’s something quite sinister going on in this house and— oh…’ With a hand across her breast she knelt down slowly and picked up the open fingernail jar, sighing as she tipped out a solitary clipping. ‘My nails,’ she said. ‘What happened to my nails?’
‘They’re yours?’ said Jack, looking rather stirred.
‘I left them in the cellar. That’s what I came back for. My nails, my ear wax, my hair and my tummy fluff. I’ve collected my body parts since I was a child. It’s my belief, Mr Bilt, that when I die, every last part of me I’ve made or grown should go with me into my cardboard coffin, in preparation for my chosen life beyond. And you’ve scattered me, willy-nilly, over the floor. How can I return as a grizzly bear now?’
Jack Bilt turned a grizzly shade of green. ‘You’re seriously weird,’ he said.
Annie stood up straight. ‘I’m calling the police.’
And, as if she’d used her magic tone again, there was a sudden screech of tyres outside. She marched to the window and hauled down a sheet. ‘Oh, how strange, they’re already here…’
‘Bone,’ muttered Jack. ‘Called the bloomin’ cavalry.’ He jerked the handcuffs urgently, bringing Ralph round.
‘’Nnie…’ Ralph slurred, spitting out a loose tooth. ‘Mum’s in dur fij tank. Ged dur box ov Jack.’
But Jack, by now, had realised the gadget was his only hope. He was fiddling with its bottle top knobs when two uniformed policemen burst into the room, followed by a man with bushy eyebrows and a beard that looked like a map of Tasmania. He was wearing a white laboratory coat and reading something off a hand-held meter.
‘Bilt?’ one policeman boomed.
‘There,’ Annie said with an old lady flourish.
The policeman jerked a thumb. ‘You’re nicked, chummy.’
Jack Bilt? Never. He threw his free arm around Ralph’s neck, pulling the boy to him, making him gurgle.
The arresting officer stalled.
‘Erm, the box he’s holding,’ the white coat said, checking the meter which was whining uncontrollably. ‘It’s giving off radionic impulses. Confiscate with extreme care, PC Sparrow.’