Shrinking Ralph Perfect (14 page)

Terrible forces, Ralph remembered her saying. Terrible forces would be unleashed if she went outside her place of haunting. The fabric of the universe would be disrupted, space would fold and a black hole would form in Annie’s front room. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be quite
that
bad, but there was certainly no doubting the physical evidence of Miriam’s distress. Her spirit was well and truly ‘troubled’ as Mrs Spink might say, and the extent of the trouble could be proportionately measured in flying tea mugs.

Ralph almost felt sorry for Jack. The builder never knew what hit him – literally. Stuff was winging in from all directions. It wasn’t just the cushions and the mugs in the lounge. The entire small, movable contents of the kitchen were being gathered into the growing whirlwind. The first thing to hit him was a copper-bottomed saucepan. It pranged off his pigeon chest, knocking him backwards, towards the sofa. He twirled and fell onto it, but the cushions just as quickly ejected him, sending him sprawling back into the ring, where a soup ladle dinked off his lanky-haired head and
a fork buried its prongs into his thigh.

Justice. Of a sort.

Under normal circumstances, the miniones would have been leaping for joy to see their captor so tormented and humiliated. But no one in the house spared a thought for rejoicing, for they were in terrible danger, too. Although Miriam’s destructive brouhaha seemed to be directed exclusively at Jack, anything within its range was fair game. Several times, the Miniville aquarium had shuffled alarmingly across the trestle table. If it was sucked up and thrown across the room there were going to be serious casualties. And if it wasn’t thrown, how long would it be before it fell off the table and dashed itself against the floorboards, anyway? And if it wasn’t dashed, how long could the tiny house survive without being crushed by some flying object?

Like Knocker’s wooden leg, for instance?

Ralph had seen the malformed terrier go running for the space at the back of the sofa. But, in the middle of the floor, the mutt had been clonked by a flying ashtray. Dizzied and confused, he’d fallen over and rolled onto his back. The cyclone had pulled him through a half-circle, tugging at his spindly, upturned legs as if they were dandelions caught in a twister. The broom
handle leg, ticking back and forth with all the fury of a crazed metronome, had quickly worked itself free of the elastic that held it to the stump of Knocker’s shrivelled limb. Then it was up and in the current. It shot to the ceiling, taking out the light bulb on its way, before rattling along a section of the cornice and dropping tamely into the tank. It landed, end on, centimetres from the east wing of the house. The boom was horrendous, the quake terrifying. Every brick in Miniville readjusted its mortar packing. On the base of the tank, a frosted white star of cracks and fractures radiated out from the point of impact. For half a second, the leg stood upright, then fell. Had it fallen against the roof of the house what hope would there have been for the miniones inside? But it didn’t hit the roof, it keeled towards the tank wall, lodging itself against a top corner.

A lucky escape – in more ways than one.

Neville was the first to realise it. He ran to the window and boldly peered out. ‘We can climb it,’ he said. ‘We can climb Knocker’s leg.’

‘Neville, get down!’ Ralph screamed. The fingernails jar had just gone up and the clippings were being sucked out and sprayed around the lounge. Jack took fifty in the head and chest. Dozens more whipped across the face of the tank, raining in at machine-gun speed through the
broken, tower-room windows.

‘Agh!’ cried Neville, strafed by a row across the back of his neck.

‘Agh!’ went Kyle, paying the price for his arrogant striptease as nails ripped across his naked chest. ‘Do something, Perfect. How do we stop this?’

‘We can’t,’ Ralph shouted, sheltering behind the overturned table. ‘Not until Miriam calms down.’

That wasn’t good enough for Kyle. Ignoring his bleeding wounds, he grabbed Professor Collonges by the collar and pulled the old man into a nose-to-nose face-off. ‘Show me how to use this thing you’ve made. Tell me how to zap the ghost or I’ll throw you out the windows before she does.’

The professor blew a raspberry into his face.

Salter bundled him aside and picked up the gadget. He shook it. Nothing happened. He pushed the button. Nothing happened. He pulled the peg. Nothing happened. He twisted the stone inside its hairpins. Nothing happ— no, the gadget buzzed. He tried the stone again.

‘Put it down,’ yelled Ralph. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. You might end up swapping places with Jack.’

Why he was giving out such a warning to a boy who’d
bullied him most of his life, Ralph couldn’t imagine. But no one in their right mind (and Kyle never had been, in Ralph’s opinion) would want to be in Jack’s shoes now. The pan Jack had used to fry Inspector Bone (who’d disappeared, Ralph noticed; now where had
he
gone?) was dancing in front of the bewildered builder, beating him backwards towards
The Frisker.
As Jack’s body fell between the gross rubber hands, the bulbs came on and flashed with the zest of a winning fruit machine. Then the gloves began to do their work, slapping Jack’s head, and only his head, sparring him upright for half a minute till his eyes rolled back and his mouth began to dribble and his melon of a brain must have turned to pulp. He slumped to the floor in a pin-striped heap. And from around the back of
The Frisker
came a hand. A hand showing weal burns at the wrist. It was Bone, somehow free from his clothes-line tangle. He flipped open a pair of cuffs and…

Snap.
Jack Bilt was under arrest. Clamped to the long, if shaky-looking, arm of Detective Inspector Nicholas Bone.

‘He’s got him,’ Ralph whooped. ‘Bone’s nabbed Jack.’

If only Kyle Salter had been paying attention. ‘It’s working,’ he laughed, as a green charge crackled out of the aerial.

‘Leave it,’ cried Ralph. But his warning was too late. Disaster was about to strike. Though tied, Professor Collonges could kick. He aimed a vicious poke at the back of Kyle’s knee. Kyle bucked and lurched forward, spilling the device high into the air. It fizzed and pulsed all the way to its landing, dumphing in the centre of a tasselled cushion.

A flash of green light enveloped the cushion and gave it a radioactive glow.

And then it proceeded to grow.

And grow and grow and grow and grow…

‘Out, boys! Now! Before you’re crushed!’ Neville yelled. And, diving past the cushion, he grabbed Kyle Salter round the waist and dragged him manfully towards the door. With the open stairs behind them, Ralph and Kyle were out of danger. But Professor Collonges was not. As the fabric of the cushion began to press against the walls, stretching to fill all available spaces, the mad inventor was trapped in a corner, unable to escape.

Neville ran forward to attempt a rescue, but could find no way past the growing mound. And so he took a saw from his belt and sliced it, cutting and stabbing in the hope that the woolly balloon would burst or he could chop a hole right through its centre and pull
Professor Collonges clear. The feathers and dust of countless decades spilled into the tiny tower room. But that wasn’t all that came out of the cushion. By the time he’d realised what he’d released, Neville Gibbons was completely surrounded. The leading wave was heel-height and growing. The most frightening creatures Ralph had ever seen.

Dust mites.

They had six, sturdy, triple-jointed legs and looked like bleached, translucent beetles. Protruding from their backs was a number of hairs that seemed to Ralph to have little or no function. They did not, for instance, appear to aid balance. For as the mites tumbled out around Neville’s feet, they stumbled, directionless, rather than ran, as if the sudden exposure to freedom and light had disrupted their sense of navigation.

‘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.