“Enzymes are the stuff of life. Without enzymes, there can be no life. And this boy’s enzymes, added to my wonderful elixir, will turn back the clock and instantly return us to our glorious, wonderful youth! And what about this glorious, wonderful youth?” Elsie Bucket pointed at Joe. “Sadly, the operation will kill the child. But I am sure even he won’t mind when he knows how happy he will be making all of us.”
“I do mind!” Joe shouted.
Elsie Bucket ignored him. “In a minute I will flick the switch,” she said. “The machine will do the rest. His enzymes will be sucked out of him. They will travel down these pipes here…” She pointed them out. “They will be thoroughly disinfected and then added to my elixir here.” She tapped on one of the jars of green liquid. “From just one boy I estimate we can make five hundred doses, enough for everyone here! By the time the process is over,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “the boy will be as shriveled as an overcooked cocktail sausage. If you find this disturbing, I suggest you don’t look.”
“I find it disturbing!” Joe cried out. But Elsie Bucket was already leaning over him, lowering the tuba contraption onto his head. “A little electromassage,” she whispered to him. “Very painful, but it helps the enzymes flow.”
“You’re crazy!” Joe spat out the words.
“How dare you talk to an old lady like that!” Elsie Bucket smiled, her face close to his, and Joe saw her gray tongue loll out of her mouth like a dying slug, then curl back to lick her ancient, discolored teeth, and suddenly he was more nauseous than afraid.
“Now!” Elsie Bucket sang out the word.
“Now!” the grannies chorused.
“No!” Joe strained with every muscle, but the straps that held him were too thick.
Elsie Bucket capered over to the control desk and sat down in the armchair. She raised her hands and flexed her fingers as if she were a concert pianist. Joe heard the bones clicking against one another.
Then she stabbed down.
The machine hummed and whirred into life. The green liquid bubbled. The lightbulbs blinked and flickered. The leather straps around him seemed to tighten, but perhaps that was his own body tensing up as it all began. Electricity buzzed through the tuba helmet, which began to grow hot against his head. Joe clawed at the arms of the chair as slowly, one after another, the hypodermic needles shivered and then began to move forward. The arrow on the EMPTY and FULL gauge trembled excitedly. The whole thing was rattling and shaking, as indeed were all the watching grannies.
The hypodermic syringes slid forward.
Elsie Bucket yanked at a lever, her eyes bulging, her whole face twitching with delight.
The green liquid in the bottles surged and boiled. Electricity flickered. The needles moved again.
Joe opened his mouth to scream.
And then all the lights went out and everything stopped.
For a long moment nobody did anything. Then Joe heard Elsie Bucket’s voice calling out of the darkness. “Don’t panic, grannies! It’s only a fuse. We’ll have it fixed in a moment!”
But even as she spoke, Joe was aware of someone close by him. He felt warm breath on his cheek. A pair of hands reached out to undo first the strap around his throat, then the ones on his arms. And at the same time a voice spoke to him. It was a voice he recognized, a woman’s. But he still couldn’t see.
“Run for it, Joe,” the voice whispered. “Get out of here and get back to London. You can do it!”
The remaining straps fell away. The knitted straitjacket was cut through with a single stroke. There was a pause and Joe realized that his mysterious rescuer had gone and that he was once more on his own. He stood up.
The lights came back on. The Grannymatic Enzyme Extractor shuddered back into life.
Elsie Bucket stood inches away, staring at him, her face twisted with fury. “Stop him!” she screamed in a voice that could have broken glass. “He’s getting away!” At the same time she reached out to grab Joe herself.
Joe did the only thing he could. He twisted to one side and pushed Elsie Bucket away. Elsie gave a small, despairing gurgle and fell backward into the seat of the Extractor just as the thirteen needles jerked forward like angry snakes. Joe didn’t see what happened next. He was already running toward the edge of the stage, searching for a way out. But he heard Elsie Bucket’s final scream as she was thoroughly punctured. He heard the great wail from the grannies in the audience. And he heard the sucking and bubbling as the Grannymatic Enzyme Extractor did what it had been built to do.
Elsie Bucket had received her last royal telegram. The machine had attempted to extract her enzymes but, having failed to find any, had extracted everything else. There was nothing left of the granny apart from her clothes, punctured in thirteen places. These were now draped over the wooden seat with a few wisps of black smoke curling upward into the light. At the same time a horrible gray ooze traveled along the tangle of pipes and spat itself out into the waiting bottles.
In the audience, the grannies moaned, yelled, and bit one another, uncertain what to do next. The machine had finished with Elsie Bucket and was now vibrating dangerously, trying to tear free of the stage. A few yards away, Joe found a fire exit and, taking a deep breath, reached for the handle. He felt the cold steel under his hand and pushed. Mercifully, the door was unlocked. He felt the handle give and the door open and then he was out, tumbling into the night air.
And at that precise moment, the Grannymatic Enzyme Extractor exploded. Joe felt a fist of hot air punch him in the back. He was thrown forward, somersaulting twice and landing in a bed of flowers. He tried to stand up, then winced and covered his head as bricks, tiles, windows, wigs, and false teeth showered down all around him. It seemed to go on forever, but at last everything was silent again, and slowly, painfully, he got up.
The Stilton International had been partially destroyed. There was nothing left of the Elsie Bucket Conference Room. Nor could he make out a single surviving granny. It was like pictures he had seen of the Second World War—jagged broken walls, thick smoke, fires burning in the wreckage. Already the fire department and ambulance service had been alerted. He could hear their sirens in the far distance.
And then somebody moved, limping painfully through the smoke, coughing and spluttering. Joe tried to run, but he had sprained his ankle and he could only wait there as the figure approached.
It was Granny.
Somehow Joe wasn’t surprised that she had survived. But the explosion had not left her unharmed. She had lost a large clump of her hair and all her remaining teeth. Her arms and legs were covered in cuts and bruises and her twenty-seven-year-old coat hung off her in ribbons.
The two of them stood gazing at each other in the debris. At last Granny spoke.
“Are you all right, Jamie, my dear?”
“My name is Joe—and I’m not your dear!”
“Oh yes you are.” Granny’s eyes flickered over to what had been the Elsie Bucket Suite. “We’re very lucky,” she said. “We seem to be the only survivors of an unfortunate accident …”
“An accident?”
“Oh yes. It must have been the gas. Of course that’s what it was. Somebody must have left the oven on.”
I’m going to tell the truth!” Joe snarled.
Granny just smiled. “You could try telling your version of the truth, but do you really think anyone would believe you? A twelve-year-old boy? They’d think you were mad, Jeffrey. They’d lock you up.”
Joe glanced at the wreckage of the hotel and realized that she was right. There would be nothing left of the Grannymatic Enzyme Extractor—and even if they managed to find a few tubes and valves, what expert would be able to work out what they were really for? Even as he watched, the flames leaped up, finding a way through the bricks and rubble.
Granny took a step nearer. Joe stood his ground. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But you can’t hurt me anymore. I know about you. And one day…”
“One day what??
?? Joe had been too kind, even now, to say what he was thinking. But now Granny said it for him. “One day I’ll be dead? Is that what you’re thinking?” She smiled toothlessly in the moonlight. Smoke from the ruined building curled around her legs. “Oh, yes. Even I won’t live forever. But don’t you see, Joe, you’ll never be rid of me. Because, you see, when I die, I’ll come back. I’ll come back and haunt you and there’s nothing you’ll be able to do.”
“You’re lying,” Joe whispered. The fire engines were getting nearer. He could hear the engines now, racing up the hill.
“Oh, no! The grave won’t keep me lying down for long. I’ll come back, you’ll see. Just when you least expect it …” Her eyes blinked, black in the white light of the moon. “And then…oh, yes, what fun we’ll have.”
Half a minute later the firemen arrived with the police right behind them. They found one old lady waiting for them in the garden. She was standing next to a twelve-year-old boy lying flat out on the grass.
“You’d better look after my grandson,” she said in a feeble, tearful voice as they wrapped a blanket round her and led her away. “He seems to have fainted. I suppose it must have been the shock.”
9
GOOD-BYE, GRANNY
M r. and Mrs. Warden returned from the South of France a few days later. They had not had a good vacation. Mr. Warden had fallen asleep in the sun and was horribly burned. The top of his bald head was a glowing red and three layers of skin had peeled off his nose. He couldn’t sit down without crying. Mrs. Warden had been bitten by three hundred mosquitoes. Attracted by her body spray, they had invaded her bed and bitten every inch from her ankles to her ears. Her face in particular was dreadfully swollen. When Mr. Warden had woken up beside her the following morning, he had actually screamed.
Wolfgang and Irma returned from Hungary the day after. They had enjoyed their vacation so much that in the four weeks they had been away they had forgotten how to speak English. They had brought everyone souvenirs of Hungary: a beet for Mr. Warden, a book of Hungarian poetry for Mrs. Warden, and furry hats for Joe and Granny.
As for Granny herself, Joe had seen little of her after the events in Bideford. They had been released from the hospital after one night’s observation and had traveled back to London on the first train. The police had asked them a lot of questions, but both of them had pretended they were asleep when the hotel exploded. Joe had hated doing it, but he knew he had no choice. He was only twelve. Nobody would have believed him.
Even so, he got grim amusement from reading the newspapers the following day. He had always suspected you couldn’t believe half the things you read in the papers, but now he knew it was all a pack of lies.
300 GRANNIES PERISH IN HOTEL HORROR
FAULTY FUSE BLAMED FOR BIDEFORD BANG
BRITAIN GRIEVES FOR GRANNIES—
QUEEN SENDS MESSAGE
He had stayed with Granny at Thattlebee Hall for five days, but in that time he had barely seen her. When his parents got home, she had left without saying good-bye.
However, she had managed to play one last mean trick on him.
On Sunday, a new nanny arrived. Apparently Granny had interviewed and selected her personally before she had gone. The new nanny was a short, plain woman wearing no makeup and a dress that seemed to have been fashioned out of a potato sack. Her hair was gray, as indeed was the rest of her. Her name, she said, was Ms. Whipsnade.
“Miss Whipsnade,” Wolfgang announced as he opened the door to her.
“I said Ms!” the new nanny exclaimed, dropping her suitcase on Wolfgang’s foot.
It turned out that Ms. Whipsnade had worked for sixteen years as a social worker before going into politics. She was a communist and had run for Parliament seven times. At the last election she had gotten four votes against the winner’s twenty-six thousand five hundred and eighty. Even so, she had demanded a recount. Ms. Whipsnade was also a strict vegetarian and actually wept when she saw Joe’s leather shoes. Neither Mr. Warden nor his wife were entirely sure about the new arrival, but as Granny had already offered her the job, there wasn’t much they could do. And so Ms. Whipsnade was shown to her room—which she promptly declared a nuclear-free zone. She also tore off all the wallpaper in the mistaken belief that it had been printed in South Africa.
On the following Monday, much to his relief, Joe went back to school. He had hardly slept at all since that night in Bideford and there were dark rings around his eyes. It wasn’t just the horror of the Grannymatic Enzyme Extractor. That had almost faded in his mind. Much, much worse was his last encounter with Granny, outside in the wreckage. Her words seemed to hang like cobwebs in the darkness and her beady eyes and twisted mouth were somehow always there—just out of sight. He realized now that he was more afraid of Granny dead than he was of her alive.
And that of course was exactly what she had intended. Alone in his room, Joe counted the hours until daylight and the days until he would be back at school. There at least he would be surrounded by young, happy, normal people. He felt safer with other children. Other children were all right. Anybody old—the headmaster, the dinner lady, the caretaker, the lollipop lady —now belonged to another, twilight world. Joe looked at them and he was afraid.
Time passed and for a while everything was all right.
Then Granny fell ill.
Joe first heard the news one afternoon at school. After lunch he was called into the headmaster’s study. The headmaster, a white-haired man of about sixty, was called Mr. Ellis. He had been a teacher for forty-four years even though he was allergic to children. He was sitting in a large leather chair when Joe came in. “Do sit down, Warden,” he said. “Sit down.”
That was when Joe knew it had to be bad news.
Mr. Ellis sneezed. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Warden. It’s your grandmother…”
“She’s not dead, is she?” Joe exclaimed.
“No! No!” The headmaster was surprised by the boy’s alarm. He sneezed twice more and tried to shrink into his chair. “No. But it is quite serious. Pneumonia.”
“She can’t die!” Joe whispered. “She can’t!”
Mr. Ellis blinked. “I have to say, it’s rare to find a boy so fond of his granny,” he muttered. He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his eye. “It does you credit, Warden. I’m sure she’ll be all right. But in the meantime, perhaps it would be better if you went home.”
Joe returned home that afternoon. The new nanny was in his room, painting pink triangles on his walls to show her support for the gay-rights movement. She had also donated his bed and all his books to the Cuban miners.
“How’s Granny?” Joe asked.
Ms. Whipsnade blinked. “Her name is Ms. Kettle,” she snapped. “As a term, granny is both sexist and, worse, ageist.”
“How is she?”
“I haven’t heard. For some reason your parents refuse to speak to me.”
For the next few days there were a lot of comings and goings at Thattlebee Hall. Car doors slammed at all times of the day and night and Mr. and Mrs. Warden seemed to speak permanently in whispers. Nobody told Joe anything and the first inkling he had that things were really serious was when he saw his uncles David and Kurt arrive at the front door. The relatives never came to the house unless it was for Christmas or a funeral and Christmas had been over long ago. Listening at the door, Joe learned that Granny’s pneumonia had gotten worse and that her doctors had more or less given up hope. His uncles were already arguing about her will.
And then on Friday morning came the news. Granny had died in her sleep.
At breakfast, Wolfgang and Irma were both tearful. Meanwhile, Ms. Whipsnade—intimating the burial customs of the Taramuhara Indians—danced in the garden and set fire to the summer-house. Later that morning, as soon as the fire department had gone, Mrs. Warden went to Harrods and bought herself a black Yves St. Laurent dress with a crepe tunic, silk veil, and a diamante trim. Mr. Warden spent most of the time on the telephone. He then
drank an entire bottle of champagne. Irma assumed he was drowning his sorrows, but Joe wasn’t so sure. Certainly his father was singing merrily enough when he was carried to bed.
The funeral took place on the following Sunday. It was a terrible day. The weather had turned nasty and the various relatives—the Wardens and the Kettles—had to battle their way into the cemetery against the howling wind and rain. It seemed that the entire family had shown up: Michael, David, Kurt, and Nita were there along with Joe’s four cousins (all in black shorts—the rainwater streaming in rivulets down their legs). But there were other relatives, too: tiny Aunt Cissie, fat cousin Sidney, and twitching Uncle Geoff. Then there was Uncle Fred, who had flown all the way from Texas, and several other relatives whom Joe didn’t recognize.
Wisely, the vicar kept the sermon short. The weather was just too horrible. After two minutes, Aunt Cissie was actually blown into the open grave by a particularly vicious gust of wind. The rain lashed down and all the color ran out of Uncle Fred’s suit—soon he was standing in a puddle of blue ink. About halfway through the service there was a great flash of lightning and Uncle David had an epileptic fit. The four cousins left early with head colds. Even the vicar looked alarmed and managed to get most of the words wrong. All in all it was a dreadful affair.
But worse, in some ways, were the days that followed. Joe had been left out of everything—as if he were too young to understand funerals, deaths, and the rest of it. As for Ms. Whipsnade, she had been fired after she had told Mrs. Warden that her mother had not died so much as been recycled. A great silence had descended on Thattlebee Hall. It wasn’t that the house was in mourning. That would have been perfectly understandable. No. It was something altogether different and more difficult to explain.
For his part, Joe was terrified.
“I’ll come back…”
What could he do? He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t even relax. He had lost so much weight that he had to look twice to find himself in the mirror. At any time he expected to see Granny return. How would it happen? Would she dig her way out of the grave and return, dripping mud and slime, to the house? Or would she come in the night, materializing suddenly above his bed and floating around the room? Not for a minute did he doubt that Granny would return. She had promised it and he had seen the certainty in her eyes.