Mr Mumbles (8 page)

I decided to keep those bits to myself. Ameena could have bumped into the light switch. The axe could have been there the whole time, for all I knew, and the shield…OK, the shield was a little harder to find an explanation for, but given time I’d think of one. It was all just a series of silly coincidences. There was nothing strange about it.

Except that I’d hit Mr Mumbles like an express train. There was no way of getting around that one.

‘OK,’ I nodded, at last. ‘Let’s do it.’

Veins I didn’t know existed bulged on my forearms, standing out like thick blue wires from the skin around them. The whole area from my wrists to my elbows felt as if it was being burned up from the inside. Any minute now I half expected to see smoke pouring from my fingertips.

Gritting my teeth, I dug my toes into the wooden floor and heaved harder, until my entire body was trembling from the
strain. I’d been telling myself for the past five minutes that I could do this, but it was starting to look as if I was wrong. Try as I might, I just couldn’t budge the donkey.

‘Come on, put your back into it,’ Ameena barked. Easy for her to say. She was perched up on top of the nativity stable, one leg dangling over either side of the pointed roof.

‘I am
putting my back into it,’ I puffed. ‘It’s no use. It’s too heavy.’

‘How hard can it really be to lift one little stone donkey?’

‘You come down here and try it, then, if you think it’s so easy!’

‘Ah,’ she grinned, ‘but I’m not the one with the magic mega-muscles, am I?’

‘Neither am I,’ I sighed. ‘It was just—’

‘A lucky punch, yeah, so you keep saying,’ she snorted. She shuffled towards the front edge of the roof, then jumped down to join me.

‘Careful,’ I warned, ‘you nearly landed on the baby Jesus.’

‘So? It’s just a doll.’

‘I know, but…it’s probably unlucky or something.’

Ameena looked at me, her mouth curving into a smirk. ‘It’s unlucky to jump off a shed and land on a doll?’

‘Yeah,’ I nodded, convincing no one. ‘If…the doll’s Jesus.’

‘I see,’ she replied. ‘I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.’

She gave the donkey statue a slap on the backside and winked at me. ‘Now, let’s give this another go.’

‘It’s a waste of time,’ I protested. ‘I can’t lift it.’

‘Then try harder. You must be doing something wrong.’

‘Listening to you, that’s what I’m doing wrong!’ I cried. I was annoyed enough that I couldn’t move the thing. I didn’t need her rubbing it in. ‘I should be at the police station, telling them everything, not here giving it Mr Universe!’

‘What?
If you hadn’t listened to me you’d be dead by now!’

‘Yeah? Well…’ I floundered, struggling to find a decent comeback. ‘So?’

‘So?’ Ameena scoffed. ‘That’s the best you can come up with?
So?
You know what your problem is, Kyle? You’ve got no imagination.’

‘No imagination?’ I yelled. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, something I
imagined
was just trying to murder us both! Imagination-wise, I’d say that’s pretty bloody impressive, wouldn’t you?’

‘Then move the donkey!’

‘But my imagination’s got nothing to do with—’

‘Move the donkey!’

‘Fine! I’ll move the damn—’

BOOM!

In a spectacular shower of dust and plaster, the statue of the donkey exploded before our eyes. I stood, rigid and staring, feeling tiny invisible threads of electricity dart backwards across my head and down my neck.

For a long time there was no sound in the church, other than the echo of the explosion. Even the wind and rain appeared to pause in their onslaught. At last, the floor gave a faint creak, as Ameena nervously shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She brushed some stone dust from her hair.

‘Well,’ she began, ‘I think we can safely consider the donkey moved.’

I didn’t reply. Instead, I closed my eyes and concentrated on the tingling sensation which still zapped through my scalp. It was a strange feeling. I’d thought it was completely new, but now I realised it wasn’t completely unfamiliar. I’d felt it a few times that night, but it had been there maybe a dozen times in the months before then, lurking quietly at the back of my brain. If I could somehow hold on to it this time – somehow stop it slipping away – then maybe I could figure out what it was.

The dim light behind my eyelids swirled in slow circles, reminding me of the satellite images of tornadoes I’d seen on the news. Every so often, a spark of white or blue would flash like a fish in a stream, before vanishing back down into the dark waters of my mind.

‘Kyle?’ I heard Ameena say, but I ignored her. When she spoke again she sounded distant and garbled, as if talking on a radio that was tuned to two different stations at once. Whatever she was saying, it could wait.

I focused on the flashes, trying to slow them down enough for me to see them properly. All the while, the electrical
tingling crept through my hair. It had changed direction and was creeping forwards again – a silent predator, edging closer and closer to the front of my head.

Flash.
A white spark shot past.

Flash.
A blue one passed by, slower, buzzing like a wasp.

Flash.
Blue again. This time I was too fast for it. As it sparked behind my eyes I concentrated like I’d never concentrated before, focusing all my attention on that one, tiny bright spot.

The little blue lightning bolt buzzed angrily, trapped like an insect in a jar. It vibrated in the darkness, but it could struggle all it liked. It wasn’t going anywhere. I’d done it. I’d managed to hold on to one of the sparks!

I was just about to congratulate myself, when the screaming started. It sounded frantic – deranged, even – but it didn’t sound like Ameena. It didn’t even sound human.

My concentration broken, the blue flash zipped gratefully off into the darkness once more. I flicked opened my eyes, and gasped. There before me lay a vision of hell.

A
lmost at once, the screaming stopped. I barely noticed it come to an end.

Around me, the church stood in ruins. The imposing brick walls lay crumbled and wrecked; the stained-glass windows shattered from their frames. Just moments ago I had been standing on polished wood, but now a carpet of weeds and grass tangled around my feet.

The chandeliers were gone. No surprise, as they no longer had a roof to hang from. Up above me, a billion unfamiliar stars looked down from a cloudless sky, occasionally winking, as if they all knew something I didn’t.

Ameena. Where was Ameena? She’d been there beside me, but now…I whispered her name into the darkness, but
no reply came back. She wasn’t here. I was on my own.

Or was I?

Through one of the gaps in the collapsed wall, I could see a street. Dark, misshapen figures skulked, stalked and skittered back and forth across the road, illuminated here and there by the flickering flames of burning wreckage.

Keeping low, I crept across to a mound of rubble, crouched down behind it, and peeked through a gap. None of the people – no, they weren’t people, they couldn’t be people – none of the
things
which were moving around outside seemed to know I was there, so if I could stay out of sight for long enough I might be able to figure out what the hell was going on.

The street outside was the same one Ameena and I had run along to get to the church, only now – like the church itself – it was completely different. The houses which lined either side of the road had all been either boarded up or torn down. Those which were still standing appeared to throb and move as if alive.

It was only when I looked more closely that I realised the
effect was caused by hundreds of insect-like creatures, which crawled as one over every surface, poking and prodding at the barricaded windows as they tried to find a way in.

The things out on the street, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be moving with any shared purpose. Some seemed to be in an incredible hurry. They would appear from an alleyway on one side of the street, and then in the blink of an eye would disappear into another across the road.

Other figures were in less of a rush. These ones took their time. They strolled lazily along the length of the street, stopping occasionally at the flaming remains of a car, warming themselves, or maybe just appreciating the destruction.

Still others were involved in brief, violent battles which came out of nowhere. Groups of two or three of the creatures would suddenly lunge and begin tearing each other to pieces. I watched, dumbstruck, as one spindly figure was torn clean in half by two larger beasts. It thrashed and howled like a demon, and I realised this was the screaming I had heard just before I’d opened my eyes.

What were they? I couldn’t be sure. A lot of them were vaguely human-shaped, but even from this distance it was clear that none of them were
all the way
human. They were either too large or too small, had too many arms, too many heads or too many
tails
to qualify as a member of the human race.

Some of them wore clothes – dirty, torn rags for the most part, serving very little purpose. The naked ones moved like animals, scurrying around on however many limbs they happened to have.

Categorising them like that was wrong, though. They couldn’t be divided into humanoid and non-humanoid, or naked and clothed, or anything like that. They couldn’t be categorised at all, because not one of them looked the same as the others.

I saw one creature covered in thick, coarse hair, another with scaly skin that shimmered in the pale moonlight. Yet another slithered along the street, leaving a silvery, slug-like trail in its wake.

They roared. They whispered. They hissed and howled.
Some laughed. Others sobbed, or snarled, or screeched or screamed.

Watching them, I realised there was one category they could all fit into. One word that could be used to describe them all:

Hideous.

Tears ran down my cheeks as I turned away and slunk down behind the rocks. What had happened? The church, the street – probably even the whole village – had been turned into some twisted, hellish version of itself, but how? And where was Ameena? Was she here somewhere, too?

All those questions. So many questions which I couldn’t answer. But there was another question, too – one I hardly dare ask myself: had I done this? Was it all somehow my fault?

It couldn’t be,
I told myself.
How could I have possibly done this?
No matter how much I tried to convince myself, though, the thought remained, lurking quietly at the back of my mind.

I decided that what I needed was a plan. Well, what I
really needed was a miracle, but a plan would be the next best thing. If I had a plan then I’d have something to focus on, other than the hundreds of creatures which lurked outside.

First thing first – I had to find out if the rest of the village was like this too. Maybe whatever had happened was contained to just this one street. Maybe there were other people – real, normal people – just round the next corner. If I could find them, we could figure everything out together.

So I had a plan, although admittedly it wasn’t without its problems. For starters, I could see thick plumes of greyish smoke billowing up from at least the next few streets over. That didn’t bode well for the theory that it was only this one which had been affected by…whatever was going on.

The second, perhaps even bigger flaw in the plan, was that to get to the next street I’d have to get past this one. And doing that may well put me into direct contact with the monstrous things roaming about.

Still, my mind was made up. Flawed or not, it was the only plan I could think of, and anything was better than
sitting here, waiting to be found. Well, no, I could think of lots of things worse, but waiting to be found was still pretty grim.

Moving as quickly as I dared, I crept on my hands and knees towards the back wall of the church, picking my path carefully through the overgrown undergrowth. Overhead, something swooped down low on large leathery wings. Not daring to look up, I listened to it circling round a few times, before, with a low gargling sound, it continued on its way.

The back of the church led out into the graveyard. Normally, going into a cemetery in the middle of the night would be near the bottom of my list of Things To Do, but, spooky as the graveyard might be, it wouldn’t come close to what was going on at the front.

When I reached the mound of bricks that used to be the back wall, I stopped and peeked outside. The graveyard was there, and, as I’d hoped, it was completely deserted.

After pausing for a second to steady my nerves, I clambered over the rubble, slid down the other side, and began to run towards the wrought-iron fence which surrounded the burial ground.

The grass crunched underfoot as I ran, my shoes leaving imprints in the frost. I realised for the first time that it wasn’t raining, and by the looks of things it hadn’t been for some time. Last I’d checked, it had been pouring for weeks. What was going on?

There was no time to think about that now. Weaving and dodging past a dozen moss-covered headstones, I made it to the fence, and squeezed myself sideways through a gap where a bar should have been.

I emerged into a thick knot of trees. Their spindly branches scratched at my face as I pushed my way through the foliage. This wasn’t right. The back of the graveyard should have brought me out on to Wilkinson Road. From there I was only along two streets and up the hill to my house. So where had the trees come from? Why was there a forest where a road should have been?

I pushed through the undergrowth and took a few hesitant steps forwards, trying to get my bearings. Before I could figure it all out, something lurking in the brush a short distance to my left gave a low, threatening growl. I hesitated,
all my questions already forgotten, as my survival instincts debated over whether to stand still or make a run for it.

With a faint rustle of leaves and a snapping of twigs, whatever was hidden in there began to creep closer – slowly, at first, then gradually faster, until I could see the grass being pushed aside in its wake. A low, squat shape appeared briefly above the scrub, before ducking down again as it crashed towards me.