Simon Clark - Humpty's bones

‘I did,’ Jenny said. It’s got masses of tentacles. Like a giant octopus.’

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Pitt grunted. ‘I saw it. It’s a big lizard.’

‘You didn’t see all of it.’ Jenny got angry. ‘I was fifteen feet up on a shelf. I saw tentacles, round suckers, green skin, the works.’

‘No, no.’ Adam seemed to pity them. ‘I was closest. I saw paws. With fur. The Voggron’s more like a lion.’

Jenny turned to me. ‘Naz, tell them what you saw.’

‘It’s weird. I saw… ’ Yes! I had seen through their eyes. A kind of telepathy had been at work. I wanted to tell them all about it. How I’d known their thoughts. But what if they think I’m crazy? Suddenly, telling them everything didn’t seem a good idea. At least not at that moment. Instead, I gave a baffled shrug. ‘The truck was covered in plastic. All I did see was a figure… just blurred through the sheet.’ But I now knew what those squirming shapes were on its back. Tentacles. Just the thought of them made my own back itch.

‘So… ’ Jenny slapped her forehead in exasperation. ‘We all saw it, but we all saw something different.’

‘A lizard,’ Pitt insisted.

Adam shook his head. ‘Big cat. Lion, maybe.’

I held up one hand. ‘But we can all agree that it came out of there.’ I tapped the empty cylinder with my knuckles. It made a gong sound that echoed away into the distance. A ghostly shimmer on the cold air.

‘And there’s another thing.’ Jenny was deadly serious. ‘Although we can’t agree on what we saw, we can agree on how we felt.’

Adam pointed to his forehead. ‘A headache. The worst I’ve had.’

We all nodded.

‘Like an ice cream headache, only multiplied a hundred times.’ Jenny rubbed the back of her neck as if it still ached. ‘And all the strength went out of me.’

I shuddered. ‘I don’t know if it was my eyes, or the power supply, but it went dark.’

Pitt became uneasy, too. ‘And when it came close, and the headache started, and you felt like crud, wasn’t that the moment that you didn’t care whether it found you or not?’

I agreed. ‘The Voggron did that to us. It can mess with our minds.’ Again, I nearly told them that, just for a few moment, I’d been able to see through their eyes. But I decided to wait until one of them mentioned it. I didn’t want them to think I’d gone nuts. So, I just added vaguely, ‘Brain control. It’s a psychic transmitter.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Jenny said. But from her expression you could tell she knew it was the truth. The Voggron had telepathic powers. Even so, she didn’t know the half of its unnatural talents.

‘Think about it,’ said Pitt. ‘Wouldn’t that be the perfect weapon? One that makes the enemy too sick and too weak to fight. Not only that, it can reach into your head and stop you even wanting to save your own life.’

And it can make you see through other people’s eyes. Why didn’t these three experience the same thing? I wondered. Why me… have I got something in common with the Voggron?

‘A secret weapon,’ Adam sounded panicky. ‘A Frankenstein soldier.’

‘But it didn’t know we were there,’ Jenny protested, ‘so how could it reprogram our brains?’

I stared at the cylinder. ‘It does it all the time, but only over a short range. And it’s only temporary. Otherwise it would affect those on its own side.’

Pitt whistled. ‘So the Voggron is a weapon. Just like the guns stored down here.’

‘Whatever it looks like,’ Jenny added, ‘it was kept frozen. When they needed it to fight the enemy it would be thawed out.’

‘Only it’s defrosted too soon. Maybe a circuit blew.’ Pitt whistled again. ‘That means there’s three more in these.’ He tapped an intact cylinder with his knuckles. Instantly a loud bang filled the vault. A sound like thunder. His eyes went wide. ‘Something just hit the cylinder wall from inside.’

Adam gulped. ‘It’s wanting to break out, too. Guys, we gotta find the exit.’

Pitt backed away from the cylinder as a rumbling came from it. ‘We could try going back to the lounge.’

In a very quiet voice, Jenny whispered, ‘Too late. It’s already here.’

There are times you think your eyes are cheating you. It must be imagination, you tell yourself. Or I’m not seeing properly, or it’s a dream. Only when I backed away I clunked into the wall. It hurt enough to prove this was no dream. Picture this: An animal that’s bigger than an adult lion. The creature prowls into the tunnel. It has a massive head with two fiery orange eyes, big jaws and a mane. Apart from the mane, and tufts of hair on its paws, it has no fur. The skin is yellow with blood-red patches. Pitt was right, it does resemble the skin of a lizard. It walks on all fours. From its back swarm green tentacles. At least fifty of them, like the tentacles of an octopus. These don’t sag but writhe in the air. They move with a quick, muscular strength. Each one is perhaps ten feet long. They reach out to touch objects: the light fittings, the cable ducts, the plumbing pipes. It must be using a refined sense of touch to map its environment. That and its eyes and other senses must create a perfect understanding of where it is. And it’s not just how monstrous the Voggron looks, it’s that nasty trick it can do — to hurt you without even touching. The headache started in my head. My shoulders sagged as the strength seeped from my body. All of a sudden I found it hard to stand on my own two feet.

Despite his fear, Pitt was in awe. ‘Folks. Meet the Voggron.’

Adam gaped. ‘Earlier we all saw parts of it. Me, paws. Jenny, tentacles… ’

Jenny shouted, ‘RUN!’

The lion-like creature, with octopus tentacles writhing from its back, leapt forward. Its jaws opened wide to reveal huge teeth, sharp as steak knives. Slashing behind it, a long bullwhip of a tail. It lashed this flailing appendage in our direction. In absolute horror I saw that the tail ended in claws. Huge curving claws. The tail slammed into the wall above my head. Its wicked claws raked the tiles. As I ducked I saw the gouge marks. If that whip-tail had hit me in the face? Think of the savage cuts!

We all ran in different directions. It followed me at first. Its paws thumped the floor, then, when I ducked under a low doorway to a storeroom, it changed direction to race after Adam. At the same time one tentacle on its back snapped out to curl round Jenny’s waist. With an uncanny dexterity it gripped the back of her jacket. As it did that, it let fly with the whip-tail again. It struck a steel girder next to Pitt. Sparks flew.

Jenny was in deep trouble. It didn’t loosen its grip on her fabric. Quickly, it dragged the girl toward its huge mouth filled with champing teeth. Then it happened again. I found myself looking through Jenny’s eyes into the monster’s hate-filled face. The orange eyes blazed. Closer… and closer. The mouth opened. In total shock I yelled. A yell so loud that the Voggron glanced back for the source of the noise. Jenny took her chance; she slipped out of the jacket, leaving it swinging in the tentacle’s grasp, then she hid behind a row of water pipes.

Deciding to attack Adam from above, the beast chose to leap onto one of the cylinders but misjudged its landing. It slipped off the curving metal to fall into the narrow gap at the other side. Frantically, it struggled to free itself. Even so, it bellowed in fury. I could see tentacles whipping the air before they latched onto the cylinder. Once it had a grip it could begin to heave itself out. For a second I watched those thick, rubbery limbs in fascination. Suckers gripped the cylinder. I felt its effect on my mind grow stronger — the headache, the weakness. Lights grew dim. Jenny pushed me.