James Munkers (2 page)

‘We're moving,' they say in chorus, and wait for my back-flips of joy.

They may be waiting a while. I look around the room at the boxes, the bubble wrap and the packing tape, and clutch at a chair to steady myself.

‘Moving?'

‘Yes.'

‘Moving away?'

‘Yes.'

‘From the only home I've known since I was born?'

‘Yes,' Mum says happily. ‘Isn't it wonderful?'

Wonderful? It's full of something, but it doesn't smell like wonder. In fact, it smells a lot like vomit. I swallow several times to keep my lunch down.

‘Where are we going?' I ask.

Garth runs in from the hallway. ‘OOZE!' he screams in my ear.

‘Quit it, Garth,' I yell back. ‘What is it with you?'

‘That's where we're going,' he says, dancing around me just out of reach. ‘We're moving to ooze, we're moving to ooze!'

I look back at my parents in horror. ‘We're moving to a place called
Ooze
?'

‘Spelled O-U-S-E,' Michael says, as if that makes it any better.

‘It's an old Celtic word for “water”,' Mum adds. ‘Isn't that beautiful?'

Oh sure. Just the darlingest thing.

‘And it's called that because it's got a river running through it,' Peter says. ‘And the river's called…' He holds a permanent marker out to Garth like a microphone.

‘OOZE!' Garth screams again, and starts chanting, ‘The river's called Ooze, the river's called Ooze.' Winifred runs in laughing and marches along behind Garth. The two of them yell at the top of their lungs, while Peter sets up a drum beat for them on the table with his markers. They get louder and louder, and twirl faster and faster around me.

A pale stream of blue starts to follow them.

‘KNOCK IT OFF!' I yell at them, my hands shaking. The noise level drops as they come to a standstill.

‘Jimmy, honey,' Mum says, coming forward and placing her hands on my shoulders. ‘You're as white as a sheet. What's wrong with you?'

Excellent question. Can't answer. ‘There's no river around here called Ooze,' I say instead.

‘Not around here, no,' she says. ‘It's way up north.'

What? We're already about as far north of the city as you can get. ‘How way?'

‘Up in Yorkshire.'

I almost choke on my own tongue. ‘You're dragging us to
Yorkshire
?'

‘Yep,' Michael says, stepping forward and thumping me on the shoulder. ‘Right in the middle of nowhere. It's going to be great.'

‘Yeah,' Peter says, coming round the table and slapping me on the back. ‘What a gap year for me. Just think of the miles of countryside.'

‘The wildlife.'

‘Hiking.'

‘Camping.'

‘Gardening.'

‘I can't wait to feel mud on my hands again,' Michael says dreamily.

It all sounds god-awful. ‘When was all this decided?' I ask.

‘Just today.' Mum smiles as she takes Michael's hand again. ‘You can't imagine how fast it all happened.'

‘I've got a fair idea,' I mutter.

Michael suddenly seems to wake up to the fact that I could be happier. ‘Oh, Jimbo, I'm sorry. I know this is all very sudden – you come home and find the house half packed up – but it all just fell into place so quickly. I got offered the job as manager in the Ouse branch of Hardings this morning –'

‘And I got a call at lunch from the agency asking if I would be able to fill the place of secretary to the headmaster at the local school,' Mum butts in.

‘And we called the real estate people this afternoon, and they said there's a house available to rent immediately – used to be a pub or something, beautifully redone and lots of room.'

‘Isn't that great?' Peter says, poking me in the ribs with his marker. ‘A pub! Every time I practise my guitar, it will be like doing a gig.'

‘It was like the universe was telling us to go,' Mum says. ‘Like a miracle – all our dreams coming true, all those things happening out of the blue like that.'

My eyelid twitches at the word “blue”. This is all sounding more like a trap than divine intervention to me. ‘Look, can't we talk about this?'

Michael looks sheepish. ‘Well, talk fast,' he says. ‘We leave on Sunday.'

Sunday
? I've got less than forty-eight hours left of my life as I know it.

‘And there's lots to do between now and then,' Mum says in the hearty way she uses when she doesn't want any arguments. ‘Too much to be bothered with cooking. Who wants fish and chips?'

There's a general uproar from the kids. I slink out and lock myself in the bathroom.

My backpack is still slung over my shoulder. I let it drop to the floor and splash my face with cold water in the basin. Then I peer at my dripping face in the mirror. Doesn't look like a psycho's face. It just looks scared and wet. It's a face that hasn't had a good day. First it gets unhinged, then it gets uprooted.

I wonder how long it'll take the good people of Ouse to rip it to pieces.

My morbid musings are interrupted by a knock on the door. ‘Just a minute,' I call.

‘It's me. Open up.'

I unlatch the door and let Claire in. She looks almost as depressed as me. She locks the door behind her again and sits on the end of the bath, running her fingers through her long hair. ‘Top ten reasons why this is the worst decision in the entire world,' she says.

I slump down onto the floor next to my bag. ‘Leaving this house,' I start us off.

‘Leaving friends.'

‘Endless miles of mud to drown in.'

‘Yeah, and we'll probably be eaten by wolves.'

‘Or the local thugs. I bet they're cannibals.'

‘Probably,' she says. ‘Oh, and starting a new school. I can't believe they'd mess me up like that in my final year.'

‘Oh well,' I say. ‘I guess I was going to start a new school anyway.'

Claire looks up. ‘What do you mean?'

I sigh, reach into my bag, pull out the envelope and hand it over to her. She might as well know.

She takes the letter out and scans it. ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Munkers… regret to inform you… destruction of school property… suspension pending a psychiatric evaluation…' She looks back up at me. ‘James, what on earth? I thought they'd let up with all that counsellor stuff. You're not going on about Dad again, are you?'

‘That was more than ten years ago, Claire. I'm completely over the Dad thing.'

‘So what's this about, then?'

I suck in air through my teeth. ‘I guess I kind of spazzed out in English,' I tell her eventually.

She snorts in sudden laughter. ‘That was
you
?'

I frown. ‘You heard about it?'

‘Everyone was talking about in on the bus. Apparently it's on the internet.'

‘Great,' I say, and bang the back of my head against the wall in frustration. ‘Claire, what are Mum and Michael going to say when I tell them?'

My big sister looks at me in sympathy, then shakes her head. ‘Nothing,' she says. ‘They're not going to find out.' She stands up and grabs a box of matches from the side of the bath, where she keeps her five billion candles. She pulls me to my feet, hands me the box and holds the letter over the basin.

I shake the box, uncertain.

‘Go on,' she says. ‘You're starting a new school anyway. There's no reason why they have to know.'

She's right. I've been given a free pass, at least for now. I strike a match and hold it to the corner of the letter. Claire lets it catch properly before dropping it into the basin. We watch it disintegrate under the orange flame.

‘So what happens if I'm actually going crazy?' I ask her quietly.

She shakes her head. ‘It's not your sanity I'm worried about,' she says. ‘I think our parents are possessed.'

Five hours I've been smashed into the back seat of this car. Wedged between Winifred and Garth, no less, who have spent most of that time having a heated debate about what type of pudding is the yummiest. I'm just considering commando rolling out the door at the next bend when a rusty sign saying “Welcome to Ouse” flashes by the window.

‘Here we are,' Mum calls and swings onto what I imagine passes as the main road. I peer through the window to check out our new village.

It doesn't look like much. A couple of old stone houses, a few shops. They seem to have replaced the footpaths with muddy tracks and the traffic lights with bare-limbed trees. Mum points out the school as we pass by – a dingy complex of buildings in the middle of a field – before slamming on the brakes to avoid a small herd of sheep.

‘Isn't it wonderful?' she gushes. ‘Isn't it just ideal?'

Right on cue a gust of wind whistles past and raindrops spatter onto the windows.

‘Great,' Claire snaps from the front passenger seat. ‘Just what we need when we're lugging ten million boxes through our tiny new front door.'

‘Everything will look fresh and green after a good shower,' Mum says firmly, turning on the windscreen wipers. She's been doing that a lot these last few days – telling us how perfect every aspect of this place is. If it were sitting in the middle of a rubbish dump she'd be praising the recycling opportunities. I look out the window again for signs of freshness and greenery, but can't see much of either. Everything is sodden, dismal and unappealing.

I can see why they call it Ooze.

The car edges around the sheep, who bleat miserably at us, and trundles on up the road. We're almost into the woods at the far end of the village before a large, ramshackle building appears from behind a scraggly hedge. An old sign hangs over the front door with “The Woolly Ram” written on it in peeling gold lettering. Mum pulls up in front of it and turns to look back at us.

‘This is it, chaps,' she says with a grin, jiggling a set of keys.

We pull ourselves out of the car. The others rush for shelter but I take a moment to squint up through the rain at the building in front of me. It's big and dark, and made from a combination of brick and stone, like it was built in the dark ages, semi-demolished and then patched up on a budget. Half of the top floor at the front is missing too, like some giant's taken a huge bite out of it and then boarded up the gaps. Who designed this thing?

The driveway runs down the side of the house towards the back. I walk across and peer down it to see whether there are more missing chunks down there, and almost get run over by Michael and Peter in the removal van. I head for the front door as the van creeps towards the back.

I walk inside and find myself in the corner of a large, rectangular room that stretches the whole length of the house. I look down the length of the room and see an open fireplace at the far end. The kitchen is in the middle of the wall opposite me, set into a large alcove and separated from the rest of the room by a long bench. To either side of it there are doors leading to the back of the house, and staircases leading to the second floor. It's a dark room, but someone's flicked on all the lights, and the whole place is crawling with family.

‘What's with the big chunk out of the top floor?' I ask Mum.

‘No idea,' she says, peering into the oven. ‘I guess it was whole once but something must have happened. It's a house with a history.'

‘A history of what, falling down?' I mutter, but she's disappeared into the pantry.

Garth races down the stairs to the left. ‘I've picked my room, it's upstairs,' he yells as he runs the length of the room and charges up the stairs to the right.

Mum pokes her head back out of the pantry. ‘As long as it's not the one at the front on the left,' she calls after him.

‘How come not that one?' Claire asks.

‘It has an en suite. After eighteen years of sharing a bathroom with you lot, I deserve an en suite. All the other rooms are up for grabs, though.'

‘Hey, do any of the others have en suites?' Claire asks, and runs after Garth to find out.

Win's head appears at the top of the other stairs. ‘Mummy, I'm having the room next to yours so I can use your bathroom too, okay?' she calls, and disappears again.

‘That wasn't the idea, actually,' Mum says, sighing.

Garth reappears at the top of the left stairs again. It looks like he's doing laps. ‘Mine is the one at the back on the right,' he yells as he runs down. He grins nastily at me. ‘All the rooms up there are taken now.'

‘Oh, don't worry about me,' I say. ‘I'll just sleep in the kitchen.'

‘There are more rooms on the ground floor at the back,' Mum says, and points to a dark wooden door. ‘Down that way, I think.'

I glare at Garth and slouch over to the door, but my hand freezes an inch from the handle. In the dimness I can see a light shining through the gap at the bottom of the door.

A blue light.

Oh no. I don't need this – not here too.

‘Piss off,' I hiss at it.

‘You piss off,' Garth says angrily from behind me. He pushes past and opens the door. The blue light, unseen by him, leads him down a dark passageway, but keeps going when Garth stops to check things out.

‘Hey, James, I've found your bedroom,' he says as he opens a door to a tiny bathroom.

‘Very funny,' I say, peering past him to see what the light's doing. It rounds a corner and disappears down another passage.

‘This one's
much
smaller than mine,' Garth says, poking his head through another doorway. I leave him to it and follow the light round the corner and down the passage. It's pulsing gently from under the last door on the right. It fades away to nothing as I open the door.

I walk down some stone steps into a big, bright room. It's a strange mix of old and new in here: worn stone floor and old wood panelling, but with electrical sockets springing out of them and big floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, looking out onto the back garden.

It's not the look of it that gets me, though. It's the smell. The rest of the house has that cold, stale smell of a place that hasn't been lived in for a while. This room smells of… I don't know, something warm and comforting, like hot bread. And even though it doesn't have anything in it, it doesn't feel empty – it feels active, like a thousand things are happening in it all at once. As I walk further into it a shiver of excitement runs down my spine.

‘Cool,' Garth says, finally catching up with me. He runs straight over to the windows and pulls one across – it's actually a sliding door. ‘Right,' he says, spinning round and spreading his arms out. ‘
This
is my room.'

‘Like hell it is!' I say, and I'm surprised at the strength of my own reaction. ‘This is
my
room, wartface.'

‘I bagsed it first.'

‘I found it first.'

‘That completely doesn't count.'

‘You've already picked your room.'

‘Marking your territory?' a voice says behind us. Michael is leaning into the room, his hands grasping the door jamb behind him as he balances himself over the drop.

I scowl up at him. ‘I'll pee on it if I have to,' I tell him.

‘I'll pee on it first,' Garth says, undoing his fly.

‘Oh, for crying out loud, Garth!'

‘I think I can solve this dilemma,' Michael says firmly before Garth can expose himself. ‘Garthy, there's no way your mother and I are letting you have a room with its own private entrance. You're too young.'

Garth huffs, but he knows better than to argue with Michael when he uses that tone. ‘Well, if I can't have it, James can't have it,' he says instead.

‘That's not actually how it works, boyo, but how about we ask Peter if he wants it?' Michael suggests. ‘He is the oldest, and you lot just snatched up all the rooms without even asking him.'

At which point, Peter himself pokes his head in. ‘Hey Jimbo, would you mind if I take the two rooms next to this one so I can use one as a studio?' he says.

‘Long as I can have this one,' I say quickly.

‘Done deal.'

I smile at my audience as Peter's head disappears again. ‘See?' I tell them. ‘
My
room.'

Michael gives me a penetrating look. ‘You really want this room?' he asks, a smile playing around his mouth.

Uh-oh. I'm being too enthusiastic. I shrug. ‘Maybe.'

Michael laughs. ‘Okay, happy families, let's get moved in. Hey Sue!' he yells up the passageway as he goes. ‘Jim actually
wants
something. What shall we make him do for it?'

By eight o'clock I have four elastoplasts on my skinned knuckles, but at least we've got all the boxes and furniture into the right rooms. I've just collapsed onto the couch when Peter comes up to me and thrusts my jacket in my face.

‘I'm going down the road to pick up some pizza for dinner. Want to come?'

‘No, I want to sit here and watch the bruise come up on my leg where I walked into your bed,' I answer.

The jacket is waved more insistently. ‘Come on, come and help carry.'

I try to point out that that's all I've been doing all day, but it's no good. He just tosses the jacket at me and heads for the door, whistling. I give in, slouch into my jacket and trail after Peter as he charges down the road with the energy of a springer spaniel.

The local grease joint, not content with a single speciality, seems to inflict upon the local community a range of the world's worst junk food: pizza, fish and chips, kebabs, curry and burgers. We struggle to find a pizza option that doesn't include donor meat.

After half an hour of waiting I moan aloud, close my eyes and let my face fall against the steamy window. I stay there for a good twenty seconds before I open my eyes to see a father and son standing on the other side watching me drool down the glass. I stand upright, wipe the window down with my dirty sleeve and signal the all-clear by waving them in.

Amazingly, they do come in and order three kebabs. The boy, about my age and hunched up in a leather jacket, wanders towards me to check out the ice-creams. Peter starts up a conversation with the father, explaining that we're new to the area.

‘Pleased to meet you,' he says. ‘I'm Rod Hacker.' He turns and smiles at me. ‘You'll be at the local school with our Martin, then,' he says loudly and clearly, as if talking to a simpleton.

I shrug, solidifying his impression of me.

‘Don't you worry, young man. Our Martin will be happy to show you about, I shouldn't wonder.'

‘That would be great, wouldn't it, Jim?' Peter says. ‘A friend already, and you haven't even started yet.'

I just want to die. What am I, four and starting kindergarten? I turn and roll my eyes, and catch Martin doing the same thing. I smile. ‘Families,' I say. ‘So embarrassing, right?'

He smiles back, only he's not very good at it. Looks more like a grimace. Still, I'm encouraged to continue.

‘Some of mine ought to be locked up in an asylum,' I say. ‘I'm thinking of disowning them.'

I get a snort for this comment as he rifles through the cornettos. Might have been a laugh, I guess. Maybe I have found a friend.

Not a very talkative one, though.

‘So, any words of advice for the newbie?' I ask, trying to draw him out.

‘Yeah,' he says quietly, turning to face me. His arm muscles bulge through his sleeves. ‘Shut your mouth before I shut it for you.'

Oh dear. Not the response I was hoping for. I try laughing, just in case he's joking, but it turns into hysterical giggling as he silently stares down at me.

Only suddenly he's not staring down at me – he's staring up at me as his feet get swept from under him and he lands heavily on his back on the floor. Glancing down I see a glowing blue tentacle unwrap itself from his ankles and disappear underneath the drinks fridge.

Hey! A blue thing interacted with someone else. It actually
did
something. They're real – I'm not insane! I grin down happily at Martin Hacker.

Martin Hacker glowers back up at me.

Oh, crap. He thinks I did it.

‘Martin,' his dad says, charging over with Peter close behind. ‘What are you doing down there, son?'

‘He slipped,' I say quickly before Martin can give his version of events. ‘Careful, it's really slippery just here.'

Peter laughs and lends Martin a hand up. ‘You're just about as clumsy as this one,' he says, nodding towards me.

Martin sneers and opens his mouth, probably to give us his opinion of “this one”, but is interrupted by the guy at the counter calling out, ‘Pizza for Monkeys.'

‘That'd be us, I suppose,' Peter says. He walks over and pays the man. Then he hands me the soggy boxes to carry and turns back to Mr Hacker. ‘It was nice to meet you.'

‘You too. Best of luck.'

I give Martin my best sorry-please-don't-kill-me face, but the steam rising from the boxes must obscure it because he's still looking homicidal. ‘See you at school tomorrow,' I say.

‘Yeah,' he says flatly. ‘I'll be looking out for you.'

Great.

I can hardly eat anything. I get through a slice and a half of pizza before I stand up and mumble something about bed.

‘Okay, bye Jim,' Winifred says and tucks into her strawberry ice-cream, completely oblivious to my pain.

My room is made stark by the electric light and the darkness outside. I feel exposed standing there among the boxes and the mattress on the floor, so I flick off the light and sit on the bottom step.

It's only when my eyes adjust to the darkness that I notice a little glowing mouse scampering along the edges of the room. It's a bit like a blue mobile night-light. I follow its progress with my eyes, trying to figure things out. There are really only two possibilities: