Chapter Fourteen

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A hand reached out and pulled at the half drowned body of Lockie Jones. Blake Jones heaved and Lockie was propelled out of the duck pond to lie face down in the garden. Blake pushed him over onto his back. Lockie coughed, spluttered and coughed again, his lungs in rebellion after their drenching. He rolled over and retched the two pies he had scarfed down for breakfast into the rose garden. As he coughed up the last of his breakfast with duck pond soup he could hear a stream of foul language coming from his older brothers.

“Who were those guys?” he moaned, trying to get up on his hands and knees and failing.

“We’ve been assaulted and nearly killed that’s manslaughter that is,” said Errol, crawling over the grass to collapse beside his younger brother. “Just wait until Mum catches up with them. They are dead. They are so dead.”

Blake hauled on Errol’s arm. “Come on. Get up! We have to ring the cops!”

Lockie struggled back up onto his knees in the rose bed. He wasn’t going to stay alone in the back yard. Those wierdos might come back. As he reached over to grab a rose tree for support he heard another mouthful of language coming from his brothers. “We’ve been burgled.”

Lockie tottered to his feet. He scrubbed at his hands trying to get out the thorns as he staggered to where his brothers stood by the ruins of the back door. In the distance he could hear a siren which rapidly became louder until it stopped in their driveway. Two policemen came running around the side of the house.

“Hands up!”

The Jones Boys coated in duckweed dirt and dripping pond water gazed at the policemen. It was too much. They had been mud bombed, netted, ducked by two wierdo’s in pink frilly dresses. Their clothes were ruined. Their mother was going to kill them. Their house had been burgled and now the police were arresting them? As one they all cried, “Mum, I want my mummy!”

Fifteen minutes later the police had finally got the whole story.

The Jones boys had been minding their own business going for a healthy walk in the early morning sunshine when Remy Polanik and Lewis Whiteburn and the members of their freak show gang had jumped on them, beat them up, thrown them in their own duck pond and burgled their house. The police agreed that the house looked pretty bad and something awful had definitely happened.

“Did you see people going into the house?” asked the senior policeman, who had met the Jones boys before and so wasn’t going to believe all the story.

“No, but they must have done it. They had huge friends wearing pink fairy dresses and they flew, I saw them,” said Lockie, wiping his eyes. The policemen stared at the mudcaked boy. “You saw them fly?” Constable Dave asked slowly. “Yes,” said Lockie, trying to wipe his eyes with his sleeve this time, but he only made himself look worse. “Great big hairy fairies in pink dresses.”

Constable Dave called to his partner, who was on the police radio, “Tell them to send an ambulance.”

Around the corner a little old lady came dragging a young man with a hand held microphone. “There, see I told you,” said the lady triumphantly. “There was an explosion at this house. I knew it. I remember explosions from before the war. I know what an explosion sounds like, just like an earthquake. The ground shakes and things go falling and there is dust and a great wind knocked me flat in 1931. I tell you, flat on the ground, I was these boys age, in Napier.”

“Yes, Yes, Mrs Murdoch. You’ve told me before,” muttered the young man.“Hi Dave. Hi Paul,” he smiled reaching out to shake hands.

“Mr Gleeson,” Constable Paul acknowledged, ignoring the outstretched hand. “This is a crime scene and I must ask you to step away from the house.”

“Right oh, Officer. I have some questions.”

“Not at this time Mr Gleeson,” said Constable Dave, coming up.

“I think these boys are mixed up in something very suspect,” announced old Mrs Murdoch.

“No we ‘aint,” said Blake. We’re not suspect. Everything happened to us.”

“Yeah, we didn’t do nothing to anybody,” Errol agreed.

“Well you must have seen the gorillas?”

Both the policemen turned to look at Mrs Murdoch.

“I got my photos developed after I met a boy with two people dressed as gorillas this morning. He was raising money for the Save The Gorilla Fund, or so he said, and these boys were in the background of one of the photos, except they weren’t gorillas they were something much worse. Much worse. Look!” The old lady thrust the photo in front of the policemen.

“Oh my lord, what is that thing?” Constable Paul put a hand up to his mouth and swallowed.

“That is disgusting!”

“Let’s have a look then,” said the Jones boys, taking a step forward.

“No snapped the Constable Dave. “It will give you nightmares.”

“I’m in one now,” said Constable Paul, looking at the Jones boys. “It must be some fancy dress thing. There are no green and purple aliens.”

“Well that’s what I thought,” said old Mrs Murdoch, “but my pictures of two people dressed as gorillas turned into this when it was developed.”

“And then they must have turned into fairies,” said Lockie.

Mr Gleeson switched on his recorder. “Can you tell me what you saw?”

“That’s enough,” said Constable Dave, “You can’t interview until we get a statement down at the station.”

“I want my mummy, cried Lockie. “I‘m not going to the station.”

“Well, where is your mum?” asked Constable Paul.

“And where is their father?” A new voice asked.

Everybody turned and stared. The clown stared back. “He was supposed to be meeting us at the circus for a rehearsal with his new trapeze partner. We have a show to put on.”

 

Giles leaned back in the newly fixed spaceship. “Not a bad little planet, eh Miranda, I quite like these small tentacles...fingers,” he mused. They are a lot more useful than sucker pads and the body is not bad at all, strong and powerful. Your idea of going back in time to a more developed human was a good one. This planet could last The Spawn a long time. Miranda. Miranda? Have you found any liquid? That’s the only drawback with this body you can’t keep the skin wet.” Giles pointed a finger at the onboard entertainment system and selected a Michael Jackson video. “Ah ha, now I can finally try out Zetaleront’s Earth domination technique.”

“Giles!” Miranda screamed from the galley, as the music filled the tiny spaceship. “Giles, not again! You know the moonwalk is forbidden in this atmosphere!”

The music swelled in crescendo and Giles moonwalked straight across the cabin and into the emergency airlock door. The crash, as he hit the door, triggered a system override. The spaceship assumed control and began to spiral down into an emergency landing pattern.

Loose objects began flying around the interior of the spaceship. Miranda started ducking and diving twisting and rolling trying to avoid getting hit by all the earth souvenirs that Giles had collected from the warehouse. “Giles,” she shouted, “When I get my hands on you...”Miranda rolled over the console and grabbed at the airlock doorframe to reach Giles.

Giles squealed. He tried to escape Miranda’s long arms. He ducked and tried to scuttle back into the main compartment. The ship nosedived. Miranda missed. A flying tin of tomato sauce hit her right between the eyes. Miranda’s huge gorilla body slumped, trapping Giles in the airlock up against the outer door. “Miranda! Miranda, move, will you? Dash it all, Miranda!”

Remy knew he shouldn’t laugh but all his life Lewis had been boring everyone with dinosaur facts and now he had a nice dinosaur tail and he wasn’t taking it at all well.

“Aargh get it off me,” Lewis moaned as he twisted and turned, chasing around and around.

“Why Lewis, it matches your eyes,” Eyepod cooed. “Everyone needs a tail and yours is a handsome tail. In a complicated slither she wriggled over to him. Lewis gazed at Eyepod and at her tail which had somehow elongated so it resembled the tail of a snake.

Stop! Don’t go any closer.” Too Cool shouted. Umm grabbed his cupcake bag. “I’m warning you Eyepod. Unauthorised food consumption will get you a few more years in the gyro-sphincter!”

“But it likes me, and I try sooo hard to be liked,” Eyepod pouted.

“Yes, but not every creature likes you. We certainly don’t,” Umm growled .

“You like me, don’t you, Remy?” Eyepod fluttered her eyelashes.

“We maybe stuck on Awe,” warned Too Cool, “but we can shrink you down to a peanut if you try anything.”

Remy looked at Eyepod ‘s sad face. I’d like to ...

The fairies tensed. Umm grabbed a cupcake from his bag.

..find a way out of here and go home,” continued Remy. The fairies relaxed.

“Never say that you like a mermaid.” Too Cool warned. “They take it as a sign that you want to get personal and for them that’s means food.”

“Food,” repeated Remy. “Don’t say that word. I haven’t had any all day, not even a drink of water.”

“Well you don’t want one,” snapped Lewis.” Look what happened to me!”

“Where is that Awesome dude? Let’s get an Untimer and get out of this mess.” Too Cool strode over to the wall and started banging on it.

“They should be along soon. We‘ve been scanned twice since we got here,” said Eyepod, who had abandoned the sad face and gone back to her usual cheeky grin. “I think they are wondering what else we will say.”

“Come and get us,” called Umm. “I need to talk to your Captain about escaped prisoners and the safe passage of Earthling minors.”

It will be a long time until you talk to our Captain, Fairy.” The voice echoed around the long chamber, bouncing off the walls which seemed to be moving closer.

“Releasing Earth prehistoric animals into our sacred grove must surely carry the death penalty.”

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- Illustration by Robyn Belton