Chapter Fear

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

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Saturday 20th March 1999

 

 

It’s kind of surreal how quickly things have gone back to normal (by which of course I mean our version of normal) in the past few days. The threat that Nick had posed to us had completely dissipated, and I was oddly proud of how we’d ultimately managed to deal with him ourselves. After all the support we’d received from Neil and co., we took him on ourselves and defeated him. I’ll be the first to admit that he hadn’t really been a constant presence in our lives for the past six months, but knowing he’s no longer out there is a relief. Neil and the others spent Thursday clearing up Nick’s makeshift base and packing up any items of note, and then they headed back up north that evening and that was them gone too.

 

Suddenly, it was just like half a year ago again. No drama, no fear, no guns.

 

No Kayleigh or Will, either. With everything that’s happened, I figure they probably simply decided to take the rest of the week off. Neither of them seems like the type to mind skipping another couple of days, especially Kayleigh. They’d be back again like nothing had happened. At least, I hope so. I’m a tiny bit concerned that there might be more to this…

 

Us being us, we decided the best way to celebrate this triumph of relative normalcy and the preternatural status quo was an afternoon in town and a pizza party. Because we’re totally cool. And we turned down Kendal’s suggestion of skydiving, since the rest of us had already had our fill of terrifying situations for the week. She swore us to trying it out some time… I just know she’ll finally break us someday. Bao was already talking about the Power Rangers movie and riding a snowboard while skydiving, he’ll probably be the first to crack.

 

The afternoon was pretty chill… the seven of us mostly just wandered around, window-shopped, and at one point we all split up and headed off to each buy something under £10 to see what we all came back with. Now, I hatched a pretty cunning plan for this. First, I went to my usual little toy store, and purchased a cheap Beast Wars figure. £5.50, well within budget. I pulled my usual trick of turning the bag inside out to obscure the shop logo – it eased my concerns of somebody from school seeing me fresh from buying a toy – and then I went into Sainsbury’s and bought a loaf of bread and some milk. Once I got a bag for those, I put the first bag inside. A Trojan horse! But as a bag! Plus I did still have the bread and milk as well as the Transformer so it wasn’t exactly the perfect cover, but I feel like it had some merit.

 

The sun was beginning its descent towards the horizon by the time we all got back to Dakota’s. We tumbled into the living room and took to the sofa and chairs as though we’d been on our feet all day.

 

“So, are we gonna show off what we got?” Kendal spoke up all of two seconds later, looking at us with eager eyes.

 

“I mean, you’ve already seen it, but I’m happy to show it off some more!” Lucy chirped, and jumped back to her feet as though the prospect of stripping had reinvigorated her.

 

“Take one item of clothing off and you’re getting chucked out,” I warned her coarsely before she could so much as hoist her t-shirt up.

 

A mischievous grin spread across her face.

“Jokes on you…!”

Her hands pulled her top up, unveiling a bunch of cartoon animal stickers affixed to her stomach.

“Sticker book, £1.99!”

 

“Ha, you got played, Alex,” Bao pointed out to me as though I didn’t already know.

 

“I mean… I didn’t expect Lucy to not strip with a set-up like that…” I reasoned.

 

“Yeah, I’m actually struggling,” she nodded vigorously. Thankfully for all of us, Kendal eased her back to her perch on the arm of the chair.

 

Bao brought his bag up from between his legs, carefully.

“Okay, I’ll go next… any guesses?”

 

“I mean, what’s the point?” Zahid asked with a sigh. “The sky’s the limit with you.”

 

“I think he’s broken his limit and it’s an asteroid,” Dakota proposed, and then giggled cutely.

 

“Bao, if you’ve found evidence of other universes, you need to tell Nasa or somebody…” I added.

 

“Okay, I’ll give you a clue…”

He paused, squinting a little as his brain went into overdrive.

“It’s very old, not specifically this but what it is.”

 

Silence fell over the room as the rest of us began trying to think of something that clue could be alluding too.

 

“An abacus…?” Dakota offered up.

 

“You’re guessing an abacus…?” Zahid echoed with a look of disbelief.

 

“It’s not an abacus, no,” Bao replied. “I think I have an abacus somewhere, though…”

 

“I think you have at least one of everything somewhere,” Harriet remarked sweetly, rubbing his back a little.

 

“It’s got to be a dinosaur, they’re super old!” Lucy cheered.

 

“No- okay, I dunno if you’re gonna get it…”

Bao reached into the bag, and brought out a boxed tea set.

 

“Why did you buy that?!” Kendal bleated, amused as much as surprised.

 

“I’ve been reading about tea over the years so I thought it could be neat to own a tea set.”

Without a hint of irony.

 

“You could have your tea Irish!” Lucy insisted, before looking to Dakota. “Right?”

 

“I wish I knew enough about actual Irish tea brands to make a witty comeback,” Dakota pouted a little.

 

“I could probably help with that,” Bao offered while returning his purchase to the bag.

 

“Sure, let me know if you learn of any cool Irish tea facts,” she smiled back. “Should I go next?”

 

“Toothbrushes,” I asserted immediately. Dakota looked at me in surprise, eyebrows raised high. “You kept saying you need to get a new one, so…”

 

Her expression shifted to what I would best describe as a bittersweet smile. From her shopping bag, she brought forth a three-pack of toothbrushes.

 

“Awww, you know her so well!” Kendal half-cooed, half-laughed.

 

“Your turn,” my girlfriend addressed me, that look still on her face, a competitive look in her eyes. “You got yourself a Beast Wars figure, right? A Basic one.”

 

My first reaction, for some reason, was to drum out a little chipper rhythm on my thighs. I then retrieved the bread and milk from my outer bag, and checked Dakota’s reaction. Her expression remained unchanged, almost like it was her poker face.

 

“Y’know, sometimes I wonder how I survive hanging out with you guys,” Zahid grumbled. “This is the most mundane collection of shit…”

 

“It’s a cover,” Dakota claimed confidently. “Get the toy out, Matthews.”

 

I tried my best to keep my own poker face – to make like Dakota and act, at best, caught out rather than plain defeated – but I’m sure I glanced away for a moment and she huffed softly the moment I did. All the same, I slowly moved my hands into the bags, dragging the process out, leaving everybody on tenterhooks while looking at Dakota.

 

Slowly but surely, I raised Snarl out from the bags, unveiling him in his card-back packaging to the others.

 

I expected to see triumph on Dakota’s face, but if anything, she seemed disturbed.

“The hell is that thing?” she asked tensely.

 

I turned the packaging around, taking a look at the contents – not that I didn’t know what it looked like, more to try and see what had her so freaked out.

“He’s supposed to be a Tasmanian devil…”

Said while looking at the brown critter with rabbit-like back legs, bushy grey tail, and oversized head adorned with angry blue eyes and ears shaped like bat wings. I’d only seen a few photos of Tasmanian devils in my time, but I was pretty sure they didn’t look like this.

 

“Huh, is that a Warner Bros. crossover or something?” Kendal piped up.

 

“It’s an actual animal…” Bao told her, half-muttered like he wanted to spare her any embarrassment.

 

“No way!” she whispered back, genuinely surprised.

 

“Well, it’s better than bread and milk…” Zahid conceded.

 

“Thanks for the glowing endorsement,” I replied with a cheery thumbs-up and not even an ounce of sarcasm.

 

“Yeah, that’s probably the best he’s ever heard for his toys!” Lucy heckled; I turned to her with a scowl.

 

“Lucy, you still have your Lion King plushies on your bed, quit acting like I’m the weird one.”

 

“They’re plushies, I’m a girl, it’s different,” she purred dismissively.

 

“And before this escalates, I’ll go next!” Kendal chimed, taking hold of her bag and swinging it a bit for emphasis.

 

“Is this gonna be sports gear of… some kind…?” Dakota asked her, sounding a little unsettled.

 

“Noooope!” the shorter girl sang cheerily. “That’d be way too obvious, wouldn’t it?”

 

“Yeah, like Alex buying a Transformer or something-”

My sister chortled as I glared at her.

 

“Is it something you wear?” Bao asked, thoughtfully, like we were suddenly playing a weird game of Guess Who?

 

“Nope,” Kendal replied. “I mean, you could do. I dunno who could pull it off.”

 

“‘Pull it off’…” Bao mused.

 

“Was that meant to be a hint…?” I questioned, looking from him to Kendal.

 

“I doubt it,” Zahid scoffed in amusement.

 

“I’ll make it easy for you: it’s a type of food.”

 

“Pasta?” Harriet suggested innocently. All the while, I started opening up Snarl’s packaging, my eagerness to get him out taking hold.

 

“Good guess,” Kendal replied, because apparently that wasn’t a total stab in the dark to her, “but nah!”

 

“Is it something you especially like the taste of?” I asked her.

 

“Heheheh…” Lucy tittered to herself. I could only imagine what was going through her head, though I’m not sure I wanted to.

 

“Pretty much,” came the response from the girl whose thoughts I was actually interested in right then.

 

“Ah.”

Zahid chuckled a little.

“So, is it a whole £10 worth of chocolate, or did you manage to not spend the full tenner?”

 

“Awh, man, I knew I made it too easy!” Kendal laughed, tipping her bag up and emptying a dozen chocolate bars onto the coffee table.

 

“You’re gonna get cavities and then your cavities are gonna get cavities…” Bao warned her.

 

“Nah, this is gonna be an emergency stash for the next month,” she replied, pleased with herself.

 

Bao turned to Harriet.

“She’s gonna eat them all within a week,” he informed her matter-of-factly.

 

“Hey!” Kendal yelped back. “I have some self-control!”

 

By this point, I’d eased enough of the edge of the plastic bubble away from the card to pull out my new figure and the plastic tray he lay in. I popped him out with little effort, and made sure to grab the instructions before sliding the tray back into the packaging. Because yes, I’m the guy who uses the instructions. And who holds on to the packaging. You may now heckle me to oblivion.

 

“Anyway, Harriet, what did you get?” Bao asked his girlfriend, who seemed to perk up a little now it was her turn.

 

“Right, your one clue is that it’s not about what it’s made of.”

And she flashed us a bright, innocent smile, eager to see what we would make of that.

 

“As in what it’s made of doesn’t matter, or that it’s about something but not about the material it’s made of…?” I questioned her while handling Snarl.

 

“The latter,” she nodded gently.

 

“Okay, so it’s something that’s about something…” I summarised, before returning my attention back down to the figure and the instructions in my lap. Multi-tasking this was hardly a big ask.

 

“Jeez, Alex, that thing is so creepy…” Dakota hissed beside me: when I looked up at her, she was actually leaning away from me a little, looking uneasily at the not-exactly-a-Tasmanian devil in my hands.

 

“A little, yeah…”

I looked over the figure, assessing all its weird features and its aggressive demeanour. It was definitely an odd look, at least…

 

“Seriously…” my girlfriend murmured uncomfortably. “Could you hurry up and transform him?”

The others were still making guesses as to what Harriet had, but I was too focused on Dakota now to hear what was being said.

 

“Yeah, hang on a second…” I replied, getting the instructions as flat as I could. I could feel her fidgeting a little beside me, making me even more pressured to get this thing into a different form.

 

“It’s like some kind of devil rat from hell…”

 

“I know, just lemme…” I trailed off, starting to get a little agitated myself. Tail out of its storage spot, sides swung out, head split in two and swung around to become the robot feet – and I’m sure I heard Dakota mutter “Jesus…” at the sight – repositioning the arms, all the while tuning back in to the others’ conversation.

 

“It isn’t a video, Baobear,” Harriet addressed her boyfriend with the lightest of sighs.

 

“You said it wasn’t a movie, I figured maybe it was a TV show…”

 

“Because there are so many TV shows about video tapes that it’s a big clue that this one isn’t…” Zahid grunted.

 

“Is it a book, then?” Kendal pondered, while I swung down Snarl’s lower devil-rat-from-hell jaw onto his robot chest and began rotating in his hind legs.

 

“Yes!” Harriet bubbled.

 

“Hey, we both got books!” Lucy observed. “Blondes are the best!”

 

“It’s not a sticker-book, if you’re trying to get me to say…”

I think Harriet was giving my self-absorbed sister too much credit there…

 

Plugging the tail-weapon into the port on Snarl’s arm, I completed the transformation. I turned to Dakota, turning the figure towards her in the hopes that his new appearance would quell her unease.

 

She winced a little at the sight of him.

“I mean, it’s a little better…”

 

A guttural gurgle sounded out from the kitchen. Dakota turned so sharply that her fear could’ve cut the air. All conversation stopped immediately.

 

I would say that Snarl walked through the kitchen door, but the brown-furred creature was even more monstrous: hulking, slavering, growling, its fur matted, its claws sharp and hooked.

 

Dakota summoned her spear, and I followed suit, quickly moving Snarl and his instructions to the coffee table; when she blasted on her costume, I did the same, and flashes of yellow, pink and red made it clear that the others were just as prepared.

 

The Hellmanian devil’s milky blue eyes settled on us and it bared its teeth.

 

With the closest thing to a battle cry I’d ever heard from her, Dakota lunged forwards and stabbed her spear straight into the monster’s back. It screeched and snarled, pulsating with green, body quickly dispersing into the air.

 

Y’know when people say that something was over as quickly as it began? This felt like it was over quicker than it began.

 

“Thanks for dealing with that, Dakota…” Bao spoke gingerly after a few moments of us simply staring on in disbelief.

 

She remained with her back to us, breathing heavily. I approached, rubbing her back gently. I couldn’t find the right words to say… that was becoming a worrying pattern this week…

 

“Whoever or whatever is bringing these monsters to life has a terrible sense of humour…” she summarised, dismissing her Painter outfit. She returned to her spot on the sofa, while I double-tapped my sword’s emblem and the others did the same with their weapons. Everything went pretty much right back to normal as we all returned to our places.

“Where did we get with what you bought, Harriet?”

 

“Oh, uhm, right-”

Harriet seemed to correct her posture, as though she’d been so thrown by the incident that she had lost her place.

“It’s a book…”

 

“And it’s not about books,” Kendal clarified for her, with just the faintest air of extra softness to her voice.

 

“A cook book,” Dakota guessed succinctly. I’m certain I felt a wave of realisation pass over the rest of us, so obvious now that it had been pointed out.

 

“Yeah…!” Harriet confirmed, bringing a Chinese cook book out of her bag. “I got talking about food with Mrs Thomson recently and I thought it could be cool to try and cook some Chinese dishes…”

 

“Awww…”

Bao gave her a hug, eliciting a giggle from her.

 

“And Zahid…” Dakota turned to him, then paused, thinking. I watched her face, and witnessed the light scowl be taken over by that competitive look she somehow wore so well.

“A guitar… pick thing.”

 

In response, Zahid let out a light huff, amused.

“You think I’d be that obvious? It was the first thing I thought of, I knew you’d all think of it too.”

 

“Is it anything music-related?” I asked him.

 

“Did you buy Kayleigh’s knickers from Dakota’s family?” Lucy shouted out almost immediately after I’d spoken.

 

“Why do you think they would’ve collected that…?” Dakota turned to her with a quizzical look.

 

“To sell to Zahid,” my sister answered with a grin.

 

“Yeah, I went up to wherever it is they’re living to buy her underwear…” Zahid glowered sarcastically. “And no, nothing music-related. You’ll never guess.”

 

“You did buy something, right?” Kendal checked with him.

 

He smirked, and reached into his pocket. Onto the coffee table, he placed ten £1 coins.

“Sure I did. I bought these with a £10 note.”

He leant back into the armchair, more than a little proud of himself.

 

We spent at least half an hour locked in a debate over whether or not exchanging money counted as a purchase.

 

…

 

That night, as I brushed my teeth with my new toothbrush (Dakota insisted I should use one of the ones she’d bought), an ingenious idea struck me.

 

Upon leaving the bathroom, I rushed downstairs and scooped up Snarl – still stood balanced on one leg with his arms raised, courtesy of Kendal – transforming him quickly while returning up the stairs. A quick test of his opening jaw function showed it was a little too inhibited to work for what I wanted, so I changed my plan slightly. It would still work, hopefully.

 

I pushed the bedroom door open a little, and peered through to find that Dakota had looked towards it.

 

With an overdramatic clearing of my throat, I proceeded to poke beast mode Snarl through the gap in the door.

“Good day, mate!” I greeted her in an attempt at an Australian accent, while bobbing Snarl in a display of amateur puppeteering. “Don’t worry, I know I look scary but I’m a good little Maximal when you get to know me!”

 

I heard a pronounced “pffft” from the other side of the door.

 

“Still, I’m nothing on you! What a beaut! And the way you took out that monster, you’re a feisty Sheila!”

 

“You’re such an idiot,” Dakota told me with fondness.

 

“Hey, my American bio gives me a 5 in intelligence, that’s half the highest intelligence there is!” ‘Snarl’ argued, and Dakota laughed that nectar of a laugh.

 

I pushed the door the rest of the way, walking in and setting Snarl down in the bag with my change of clothes in.

 

“Between you and me, he still scares the bejesus out of me,” my girlfriend noted.

 

“Yeah, well, think how his enemies feel when they see him coming,” I countered, joining her on the bed and hugging her.

 

“I wouldn’t want to be one of them,” she purred in my ear.

 

“Sorry you got so freaked out by it…”

 

“It’s Kenner’s fault, not yours.”

She gave me a little squeeze, then moved out of the hug, her hands on my arms, staring into my eyes.

“Thank you for trying to make me feel better.”

 

“Only ‘trying’?” I asked with a cheeky smile, and she failed to force back a smile of her own.

 

“Thank you,” she began, pinching my nose, “for waving the creepy toy in the door and putting on a silly Australian accent.”

 

“No problem, happy to help,” I replied nasally, because in spite of her tongue being in her cheek there, as long as she was smiling, everything was right with the world.

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