Chapter Two
It’s All Gone Black
When I say a bit funny I really mean majorly weird.
The room starts to spin around me, getting faster and faster. Or is the room still and I’m the one spinning? It doesn’t matter: the point is everything seems to be spinning around.
There is also a sort of swooshing, rushing, rumbling noise, kind of like the noise you get if you stick your fingers right in your ears, only much louder.
I’m getting dizzier and dizzier and feel I’m about to black out when there’s a flash of super bright light and I thump down onto the floor.
Perhaps I did black out for a second or two because the next thing I know I’m lying on my back in the dark. Rolling onto my hands and knees, my heart beating fast, I grope around wondering why all the lights have gone out.
That’s weird, the floor is all cold and dusty. It feels like stone. But dad’s office has got a carpet hasn’t it?
“Sandy?” I whisper, a slight waver to my voice. I’m annoyed at myself for feeling frightened of the dark, like some little kid, so I call a bit louder, “Sandy? Can you hear me?” There’s no response. I bet she’s snuck out of the office and turned all the lights off to scare me.
“Sandy! I know you’re there!” I shout, shuffling forward on my hands and knees to try and reach the door and the light switch. “Stop playing around and switch the light back on!”
OW!
My hand flies to my head and comes away sticky. Blood? Reaching out with my other hand I feel the rough stone wall I’ve just bashed into.
Rough stone wall? There aren’t any rough stone walls in dad’s office. My heart is really thumping now. What’s going on?
Using the wall to steady myself in the dark, I get to my feet and, with my hands stuck out in front of me to ward off any vicious walls, I shamble about like a zombie; except I don’t make any moaning noises and none of my bits fall off. And, being dead, a zombie’s heart wouldn’t be banging against his ribs.
My foot knocks into some small, hard object and I hear it skitter across the stone floor (the object, not my foot). Getting back onto my hands and knees I grope around until my fingers touch something hand sized and plastic: dad’s i-Rate4!
Snatching it up I stab a finger at the screen and it springs to life, casting quite a glow in the pitch black.
I’m not in dad’s office at all! I’m in a tunnel!
How can I be in a tunnel?
My heart is really starting to pound now, like a caged gorilla trying to escape. Panic starts to flood my mind and I can feel it beginning to seize up.
Remembering what dad always says when I’m feeling like this, I take a deep breath, toss the gorilla a banana and force myself to calm down and think.
How can I have ended up in a tunnel?
Ah! I know! I clamber to my feet again and inspect the roof of the tunnel, expecting to see the trapdoor that I must have fallen through. But there’s just solid rock above me!
I stand there for a while, my mind racing but going nowhere, just repeating the words TUNNEL, DARK, LOST and, strangely, CHEESE over and over.
Fortunately the sting of blood trickling into my eye snaps me out of it. I rub my arm across my face to wipe the blood away with my sleeve but jerk away: the feeling is all wrong. It feels like my arm is bare and my face is hairy!
In the glow of the iRate4 I find that my arm is not only bare, right up to the shoulder, but has huge muscles. It’s also very long. And I have tight fitting, fingerless black leather gloves on my hands, with small metal points on the knuckles. They wouldn’t be tight fitting if my hands were their normal size but they’re enormous.
Holding the iRate4 further away I check the rest of me. Instead of my normal jeans and Star Wars t-shirt I’m dressed in black leather trousers and a jacket made of the same stuff but with chain mail stitched across the shoulders. There’s a sword hanging from a belt at my waist and a bandolier stuffed full of knives draped diagonally across my body from one shoulder. And I’m massive, at least two metres tall, with muscles like a body builder.
What has happened to me! My mind starts churning out words again: ARGH, FREAK, HELP, SNOOT but finally settles on FROSTY! That’s my own phrase by the way. It means, like, really cool!
Strangely, despite the weird thing that has happened to me, I stand there in the dark grinning, wondering what my mates at school are going to say when I turn up looking like an American wrestler. My grin widens when I think about what I’m going to do to the kids who keep teasing me about my name. (Pants is bad enough but what my parents were thinking when they called me Tyger I don’t know; even I get images of stripy underwear in my head every time I hear it.)
My grin fades away as I remember that I am lost. I have to find my way out of this dark tunnel and back to the library.
Well, the tunnel must go somewhere. I guess I’m in some basement under the library and there are bound to be stairs back up to the main building. So, holding the glowing screen of the iRate4 before me like a torch, I creep down the tunnel.
After a minute or two, I turn a corner and am relieved to see light spilling out of an opening in the side of the tunnel; but, as I approach, the hairs on the back of my neck tingle and I feel a weight of dread settle in my stomach. Without thinking about it I find I have pulled the sword at my side from its scabbard. It feels comfortable in my hand and, feeling more confident, I stride the last few steps to the opening and peer through.
I’m hoping to see some dusty archive room crammed with old books, perhaps with Mr Boring or Miss Dull hanging around, waiting to show me back to dad’s office. What I actually see is a rock cavern filled with the flickering light of flaming torches. It’s certainly not what I was expecting to find under the library.
Neither is the group of men that are running across the cavern holding the flaming torches. They’re coming from the opposite direction and heading rapidly towards me.
Thinking they might be able to help me I step into the cavern, which proves to be a mistake.
The group of men skid to a halt. “Who’s there?” growls the largest man, waving his flaming torch before him. He’s enormous, even bigger than me! That’s the new me, not the ten year old me. He is also the ugliest looking bloke I have ever seen: he looks more like a dog than a man. An ugly dog. The word ‘werewolf’ springs into my mind. I dismiss it as nonsense. But then I look at the sword that my heavily muscled arm seems to be automatically bringing up into a protective position in front of me. Isn’t that nonsense?
What the heck is going on!?
The group pull out swords, knives and other dangerous looking things that I don’t even know the name of and spread out before me. There are four of them. Each looks like some kind of man/beast. There’s another werewolf, although smaller than the first, one that looks like a rat/man...wererat?...with a twitching, pointy nose and a scaly tail flicking around behind him, and a long eared...wererabbit?
Majorly weird! It’s like some sort of fantasy story.
Fantasy story?!
My thoughts flash back to my fight with Sandy over dad’s iRate4. Hadn’t the bloke on the phone said something about trouble in the Fantasy Section? And pressing the screen to start the mission?
I touched the screen! My stomach tightens. Am I on some kind of secret mission?