Beyond the Knock Knock Door (5 page)

Hurtling as comets of energy, the triplets pinballed across the universe. One moment, they flashed past Jupiter – the next, who knows! They streaked past planets, red giants and multicoloured nebulas, feeling no pain but an overwhelming sense of being stretched. They skimmed the triple rings of a large moon, spiralled into a wormhole, whistled among sky castles and then flashed through a raging starship battle. Lasers from a thousand gunports blazed between armadas before a villainous cruiser detonated and threw them into a distant galaxy. Most of the time they were blurs, travelling faster than the speed of light, then suddenly, without warning, they'd slow above a civilised world. Just as they spotted an amazing canyon city or a swamp tribe, they'd be yanked through space again.

Within minutes, their course straightened. The blue-green island planet loomed before them, growing larger and larger until they burst through its atmosphere and sped towards a rainforest. They collided with
a mountain range and darted through the rock like ghosts. Everything turned black before their atoms reformed again. A deluge of stormwater knocked them off their feet, sweeping them along a dark shaft. They rode on their backsides towards an archway of dull sunlight curtained by cascading water, until they shot through it and –

‘AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!'

– fell from the sky!

Splash!

‘AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!'

Splash!

‘YAAAAHHHHOOOO!'

Splash!

Luke plunged into the rock pool last, kicking free from the bottom and breeching. He shook water from his head like a dog then shouted, ‘What a ride!'

Coughing, Michael flailed about until Samantha pulled him on land. ‘Do you always have to be such a
boy
?' she asked Luke.

He barely heard her, however. Above them, a waterfall thundered over a cliff and hammered the rock pool. Its stream flowed east through a rainforest thick with ferns, orchids, vines and gigantic trees. The canopy blocked the morning sunlight, and mountain peaks sliced open the clouds. Where were they?

‘The other side of the park?' Luke guessed.

‘Cities don't have rainforests,' Michael said.

He retrieved his knight's helmet, while Luke poured out his jetpack. Samantha, yearning for her soft bed
back home, collapsed face-down on a boulder to dry. They jumped when Luke suddenly panicked. He slapped his pockets until, with a relieved sigh, he held up the toy robot warrior he'd won at Rajan's birthday party. ‘I thought I'd lost it,' he said, only to be answered by his siblings' groans.

When his strength returned, Michael circled the rock pool and pointed to the top of the waterfall. ‘I think we travelled
through
it – not
over
it,' he told his brother. ‘There must be a tunnel hidden inside that cliff.'

‘Then how are we going to get back up there? It's at least thirty metres high.'

‘We don't,' she said, switching from her right cheek to her left to face them. ‘There's bound to be a road around here somewhere. We'll flag down a ranger or driver to help us.'

The boys looked at her then each other. ‘Er, I don't think we're even on Earth,' Michael said.

‘Don't be stupid. Where else would we be?'

He blinked. ‘Somewhere past Jupiter?'

She rolled over, her whole body hurting, not to mention her head. ‘Dream on. We simply fell into the stormwater drain and this is where it spat us out. End of story.'

‘Are you awake?' Luke said. ‘We just saw spaceships, planets, flying castles –'

‘C'mon. It's a dumb movie to frighten kids like us from poking around in that pumphouse.'

‘Then forget about going to the cinema again. That's the best movie I'll ever see.'

‘We definitely travelled through something weird,' Michael said. ‘Look at the sky. It's morning. When we left the party, it was dark.'

She slid off the boulder and removed her pirate hat and bandana to wring her long, black hair. ‘That doesn't mean anything. We could've been down in those tunnels for hours and not known it. Or we could have been knocked on the head.'

‘
Now
who sounds stupid?' Luke said.

‘It makes a whole lot more sense than us travelling through space.'

‘But my head doesn't hurt.'

‘Really?' She clipped him on the back of the skull.

‘Ow! What did you do that for?'

‘For getting us into this mess.'

Nursing the sore spot, Luke grabbed his jetpack, stormed to the other side of the rock pool then shouted, ‘You're the worst sister in the world, you know that? Who needs April Thornleigh to bully us when we've got you!'

He marched away but Samantha made sure she got the last word in. ‘That'll be nothing compared to the smack Mum'll give you when we get home!' she yelled. She shifted the cutlass on her sash, then added, ‘Good riddance, huh?' But Michael pulled on his helmet without acknowledging her and followed his brother. ‘What? He had it coming. Where do you think you're going? Michael! Get back here. I'm not kidding! Michael!'

He easily tracked his brother through the mulch
and down a slope towards the stream. The air was crisp and tinged with nectar and decay. Three small, red explosions burst among the canopy and led him to an enormous kapok tree. Luke stood among its roots with a twig in hand. ‘Watch this,' he said.

He tapped a plump yellow toadstool and counted to five before –
ZING!
– its cap whizzed upwards like a spinning top.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Bright spore trails fell back down and sprinkled the undergrowth.

Michael prodded one that bloomed with a blue bang.

‘Or how's this for weird?'

Luke annoyed one of the many flat orange fungi spiralling up the tree like a staircase. Within moments, stumpy little legs spread from its base before all the fungi suddenly started crawling up the trunk.

‘What are they?' Michael asked, stooping closer.

‘Caterpillars with giant orange sails on their backs?'

Several ferns swayed and snapped at the top of the slope, catching them by surprise. Rather than discovering a new, exotic animal, they heard grumbling as Samantha crashed forward. ‘You're going the wrong direction,' she said. ‘The road will be up here, not down there.'

‘We're following the stream,' Michael announced over his shoulder as they kept moving. ‘It's smarter to stick by fresh water.'

‘“
It's smarter to stick by fresh water
”,' Samantha mocked in a smarty-pants voice, standing her ground while watching them leave. Well, go on. Get lost. See if she
cared. She was going to hike upwards and flag down a driver to take her home. She'd be snugly in her slippers and drinking hot chocolate in front of the TV, while these dummies would still be lost out here, waiting to be rescued by park rangers. Who would be the favourite child then?

She climbed a dozen metres before glancing up the steep mountainside, which appeared impenetrable. She blew back her hair and moaned. Knowing those two, they
would
end up lost, falling down a giant hole or getting themselves killed. And who would Mum and Dad blame? Her. That's right! Samantha Elizabeth Bowman. Oldest child and first to be yelled at every time.

She charged after them and – typical! – was immediately given the silent treatment. Fine. They'd better be grateful later that she'd saved them from certain death.

An hour passed and they still hadn't sighted the city. No trail signs, no fences, no paths, no stormwater pipes – not even a tossed-away drink bottle littered their way. Everything was pristine. While this unnerved the boys, it perked up Samantha. She reminded them several times that her plan was far superior until they shouted at her to shut up.

Deep in the rainforest, they unearthed their first real discovery. Michael walked across a fallen trunk bridging the stream-turned-river and, from a snag, he freed a crushed red war helmet. ‘It must be six hundred years old,' he said, cleaning muck from its broken antlers.

‘Don't be stupid,' Samantha said, joining him. ‘It's just another costume piece. Somebody from the party dropped it in the stormwater.'

‘It's too heavy to be a fake. See. It's metal. And there's no tag inside.'

‘Well, it can't be real. I don't think too many Vikings lived in parks.'

‘Rainforests,' he corrected her. ‘And it's a samurai helmet. You can tell by –'

‘It's junk. Throw it away.'

It was their only discovery for some while. They followed the widening river further, hopscotching leaf-cutter ants and tarantulas. Privately, they each feared they were getting more and more lost but kept moving, convinced help was just around the next bend. Under such a thick canopy, even the sun seemed distant.

‘Are you sure you don't have something to eat?' Luke asked.

‘Just like last time – no, I don't,' she answered.

‘Not even chewing gum?'

‘Waitaminute. Yes – Yes, I do. My coat is filled with gum. And chocolate. And sandwiches. And a map to get us out of here.'

‘Okay, okay. You don't have to get nasty.'

Squatting, Michael washed the tiredness from his face as the others rested against tree trunks and massaged their feet. They hadn't slept in ages. Drinking from a cupped hand, he listened to the river and the nervousness of frogs until water drained through his fingers. He stood, realising the branches were silent.

‘Enough!' she announced, sliding out her plastic sword. ‘This is ridiculous. We're camping in there until a search party finds us. No arguments.'

‘About time,' Luke said. He slipped off his jetpack and helped her hack through a snake nest of vines into a small, dry clearing.

Michael hesitated. ‘I think we should keep moving. Something's wrong. Rainforests aren't supposed to be this quiet.' He examined the trees for any flash of colour or warble. Since splashdown, he hadn't heard a single bird.

Unconvinced, his siblings used their costumes as makeshift pillows and promptly fell asleep. The morning drifted past like the lazy river next to them. Soon, Michael's eyelids also grew heavy and he caught himself nodding off. Sleep came easy.

He jolted awake when he heard a distant screech.

‘There it is again,' Samantha said, crouching. ‘Coming from the mountains.'

‘And getting closer,' Luke said, strapping on his jetpack. The air had warmed. Judging from the height of the sun, they'd slept through midday.

‘Do you think it's help?'

SHHHRRRIIIEEEKKK!

Michael clawed the soil, suddenly light-headed.
What was that noise?

‘Is – Is it a bat?' she asked, wincing.

‘A big scary one,' Luke said. ‘And it's looking for us!'

The trees started to sway. Leaf litter scattered in stinking breaths. Whatever was approaching, it was huge!

SHHHRRRIIIEEEKKK!

Pain arced between their ears and they crumpled to their knees. Their minds spun as they lost all sense of balance. Samantha managed to haul her brothers to their feet as an invisible presence smashed through the trees, hungering for them.

‘Move!'

They fled, barrelling through branches, ferns and enormous spider webs as the menace gave chase. They jumped logs and ducked under vines, hoping to shake off the invisible terror, but it freely wove among the trees. Nothing could move that fast. Nothing they'd ever seen.

SHHHRRRIIIEEEKKK!

Their minds turned inside out again and knocked them off their feet. They crashed into the undergrowth, which wheeled as a giant blur. They wanted to be sick, but they also wanted to live. Desperately, they lurched to the right and chased the now roaring river.

Disaster. Samantha grabbed her brothers before they shot past her and fell to their deaths. Smack in front of them plunged a forty-metre waterfall.

‘Where to now?' Luke asked above the roar. Gigantic trees towered in front of them. A cliff face flanked them. And that horrible noise drew closer.

‘We have to turn back,' Michael said.

‘Are you kidding? Towards that thing?'

‘Maybe it's just a wild pig.'

SHHHRRRIIIEEEKKK!

They blocked their ears. ‘Yeah, the size of a truck!'

Samantha took charge. She snatched a vine as thick as a man's arm and tugged. It held as good as any rope. She readied to swing off the cliff when Michael stopped her. He pulled on it again, only to watch it break free from the canopy and plummet below. ‘They grow up – not down.'

‘What are we going to do?'

SHHHRRRIIIEEEKKK!

Their skulls rippled with pain, and, frantically, Michael looked along the cliff face, spotting the veiny, collapsed tree trunk of a giant strangler fig. Excitedly, he rushed towards it, shouting at his brother and sister to catch up.

‘You can't be serious! We're not climbing down that. We'll fall off!'

‘Who said anything about climbing down the outside? It's a strangler fig. They're hollow.'

SHHHRRRIIIEEEKKK!

With no time to argue, Michael clambered down its middle. Wide as four men, it was a giant tube of roots. Samantha and Luke watched him descend into the darkness filled with bugs and creepy-crawlies before hearing another horrible shrill.

‘Move!' she yelled. She scrambled into the strangler fig last, clawing at roots and searching for footholds. One miss and they'd all tumble to their deaths. Another giant scream blasted from the cliff face and rained dirt on them. ‘Hurry up!'

Down, down, down, they climbed.

‘Did anyone see what kind of monster it was?' Luke panted far below at the base of the mountains. They'd put plenty of distance between themselves and that waterfall.

‘Monster?' Samantha said dryly. ‘
Please.
There's no such thing.'

‘Then what did we just run from?'

‘A machine. A bulldozer maybe.'

‘Bulldozers don't sound like that.'

‘This one does.'

‘Then you look pretty scared for someone running from a
bulldozer.
'

She staggered to her feet, winced at the stitch in her side then continued into the thinning undergrowth. ‘Do not.'

He followed after her. ‘When are you going to admit we're on a whole different planet? Probably in a whole different galaxy?'

‘
You
might be on a different planet, but
I'm
not.'

‘Then how do you explain this rainforest? Some granny's overgrown garden?'

‘Okay, so we're not in the city. The stormwater just – I don't know – swept us further out than we think.'

‘To where?
The Amazon
? One little pipe and –
bang!
– watch out for piranhas? Are you insane?'

She turned on him. ‘Look! I know as much as you, all right? But before we start believing in monsters and different planets, let's find help, okay?'

Tired of the bickering, Michael drifted away. He watched an owl butterfly warm its wings then spotted a hairy tarsier with big, blinking red eyes. He tossed stones at giant seed pods hanging from the canopy and bolted when they exploded like jumping jacks. He ran his hand over the roots of another strangler fig that twisted and thickened around the trunk of a big-leaf mahogany tree. Soon, those same roots would fully cover and choke it to death. Only the strangler fig would remain.

Nearby rustling scared him. A creature was wriggling through the leaves. Hesitantly, he stepped forward. When he got close enough, he pulled apart the branches and expected to see a young bird but leapt back in fright. A seahorse – a flying seahorse! – zipped inches in front of his face, beating its little fins like wings. It curved to the right, spooked by the approach of Luke and Samantha, and fluttered upwards into the canopy. ‘Wow!'

‘What's “wow”?' Luke asked.

‘Hey, do you smell that?' Samantha interrupted,
catching the hint of a fresh breeze. Toadstools whirled and popped as they ran among the thinning trees and caught glimpses of a green meadow pimpled with stumps and wrinkled with hills. Beyond it, on the horizon, blazed a blue ocean.

‘I don't see any houses or roads,' she said, sticking to the shadows of the rainforest. ‘But look there,' she pointed. Along its edge, red rags fluttered from two hundred trees. Leading up to them, parts of the meadow had been flattened by boots. ‘So much for your aliens.'

Michael smiled and looked to the canopy. For now, he didn't have the heart to tell them about the seahorse. They'd call him mad.

Luke searched the ocean for ships. ‘There might be houses by the beach,' he suggested.

Michael led the way, pushing into the meadow. He halted immediately. Something was wrong. Dreadfully wrong.

His arms and legs were suddenly heavy. He felt too sluggish to move. Glancing down, his breath hitched with alarm. Wherever the sun struck his costume, the gold plastic was hardening into steel!

His plates of armour glistened. His gauntlets stiffened. The nicks and scratches sealed together. The fake leather straps mended and tightened. His sword weighed down in its scabbard. His tattered red cloak restitched itself into fine cloth with curling gold embroidery. And his chain mail clinked as each row of rings turned solid. Speechless, he flexed his fingers inside his new gauntlets, only to pause when he discovered
each shoulder guard transforming into the enormous head of a roaring bear. The insignia of a third – fighting and clawing on hindlegs – grew large on his chestplate. And finally, the face of a fourth – with snarling teeth and angry eyes – became his helmet.

The shock overwhelmed him – not to mention the extra kilograms. ‘
Whoa!
' He crashed backwards on the grass.

As his siblings rushed into the sunlight to help him, they too froze.

Luke's star ranger uniform aged in reverse. His green and yellow leather jacket and pants turned soft and supple. His utility belt drooped with new pouches. The hi-tech gadgets and computers on his wrists and belt blinked and beeped to life. His crash helmet fit his head. The red plastic visor attached to his earpiece fizzled into an electronic display – diagrams and data scrolled in front of his eyes. Solar panels charged his jetpack. ‘How cool is this!' he laughed, pressing a button.

BOOOOOOM!

‘WAAAHHHOOOOOOO!'

The jetpack rocketed him into the clouds.

At first, Samantha's changes were cosmetic. Her pirate hat puffed out with real ostrich feathers; a steel cutlass curved from her hip; her white shirt and red sash changed to silk; and the ratty patterns on her purple vest and coat rewove themselves into silver thorns and roses. Even her buttons turned into pieces of eight. She looked quite dashing. But then her chin and lips itched.
She scratched them with increasing fury until she felt needles of thick, spiky hair growing where she'd drawn her goatee.

‘AAARRRGGGHHH!'

She ripped the black tuffs from her face and threw them to the ground. But just as she cleared one patch, another sprouted in its place. ‘Get it off me! Get it off!'

Wondering what was wrong, Michael struggled to sit up. When he saw her face, he baulked. When he saw her neck, he turned white.

‘What?' she demanded tearfully. ‘Tell me!'

‘Your tattoo. It's – It's hissing!'

‘AAARRRGGGHHH!'

She wrestled out of her coat and found the cobra slithering across the surface of her skin. It writhed round her arms, shoulders, legs and belly, as she hopped on the spot, trying to shake it loose. Screaming, she bolted back into the rainforest, looking for a river to scrub the ink off.

At the same time, Luke roared past, losing altitude as an alarm squawked: ‘WARNING! WARNING!' He crashed into the meadow, a cartwheel of arms and legs.

‘Cool,' he repeated, before collapsing.

They camped under a young tree that evening, still a few hours walk from the ocean. During the afternoon, they'd discovered more signs of civilisation. The ruins
of a stone farmhouse sheltered them from the wind and kept their fire bright. A collapsed monastery ghosted the hill opposite them, next to a cemetery, which they'd wait until morning to explore.

‘What is that?' Michael asked, hearing running hooves.

Luke scanned the darkness with his visor, picking up a pair of heat signatures. ‘Deer,' he said. ‘There's a herd on the slopes.'

‘Do you see –?'

‘No. I've zoomed all round us and we're safe.'

The triplets peered beyond the ruins. Their instincts told them otherwise.

Luke keyed his wristpad and the visor fizzled, turning the landscape black again. Two white half-moons and a third purple giant hung in the sky.

‘What else does that do?' Samantha asked, pointing to his earpiece.

‘What doesn't it do might be a better question. It's got everything – infra-red, night vision, encyclopedias, video playback, telezooms, temperature readings, a compass, microphone – there's even this light flashing with the word RADAR. Maybe if I press this button –'

PPPFFFSSSHHH!

They jumped as a small satellite fired from the top of his jetpack. It trailed into the sky before disappearing. Within moments, his visor switched to green. It displayed an aerial layout of the surrounding terrain and their exact location. To their right, twenty small dots ran away – the deer, he realised. To their left –

That was strange. A warning signal beeped again before the screen faded. Oh, man. Another power failure. The solar cells needed recharging.

‘Don't push any more buttons,' she said. ‘You could end up on one of those three moons.'

‘Three moons, eh? So you finally admit that we're no longer on Earth?'

She pulled back her silk sleeve. Frightened by the fire, the cobra slipped up her arm. ‘How many bikers do you see tattooed with one of these?'

‘Does it hurt?' Michael asked.

‘No. Just itches – like touching a caterpillar. Scratching only makes it move, see?'

‘At least it's not poisonous.'

‘Great.'

She clawed at her goatee then threw another branch on the fire. Luke reached into the pouches on his utility belt and pulled out the toy robot he'd won at Rajan's party, followed by a silver survival blanket, first-aid kit, screwdriver, rope, lighter and parcel containing an inflatable six-man raft. As he'd discovered, the pouches were seemingly bottomless. They stored as many items as placed in them and slowly restocked anything he removed.

‘Hey, a gold coin,' he said, thumbing it towards Samantha. One side showed a seahorse, and on the other, the profile of a young queen.

‘Any more food in there?' she asked.

‘Just more of those awful lemony rations.'

They split up the energy bars, silencing their stomachs for a few more hours.

‘How about you, Mikey? What special powers does your armour have?'

He half-smiled. ‘It tires me out.' Then, pulling off his gold gauntlet, he handed it to his brother. ‘Throw it as far away as you can.'

Luke stood and tossed it twenty metres. Within seconds, the gauntlet boomeranged back and snapped on Michael's wrist.

‘Now that
is
weird. Try your hat, Sis.'

She tossed it away and, it too, returned.

‘We can take off the costumes but not be separated from them,' Michael explained. He removed his gauntlet again and placed it in front of them. He made a fist, which the metal fingers mimicked. ‘I think we're the only ones allowed to wear them.'

‘But that would mean –'

He nodded. ‘Mr Goode Deed's behind all this.'

‘That nutcase?' she said.

‘Think about it. Back home – his shop in the strange alleyway that suddenly appeared, the Now-Or-Never Wagon, the key to the pumphouse –'

‘It was just a key to the pumphouse.'

‘No, there's more – something I haven't told you. When I caught the train two days ago, I helped a homeless man buy a ticket. When we got off at the station, he dropped his wallet with two hundred bucks inside –'

‘Two hundred bucks?' Luke repeated. ‘A homeless man? Are you kidding?'

‘Exactly. And later, I saved him from being hit by a cement mixer.'

‘Since when did you join the Scouts?' she snorted.

‘Listen. He also dressed up as a baby chicken and a security guard. I saw the costumes in his shop. He might've even been that guy who told us the powerlines were down, steering us towards the park. He's been behind this from the start.'

‘You sure he wasn't wearing a cereal box?' Luke asked. ‘He's definitely the king of fruit loops.'

‘Why would anyone want to dress up as a homeless man?' she said.

‘It was a test,' Michael answered. ‘To see who would help him. To see who was honest enough.'

‘And out of the millions of people in our city, he picked you, right?'

‘No, the opposite. I picked myself. He was waiting for the right person to come along.'

‘It's bad enough your brother thinks he's superhuman, Mikey, but coming from you, it's a little sad.'

‘How do you know all this?' Luke asked.

‘I don't. I'm guessing. But when we left his shop, he said something weird: “One good deed deserves another”.'

‘That's ludicrous,' she said.

‘So's you turning into Captain Blackbeard,' Luke replied.

Not believing a single word, she drew her cutlass and left for the bushes. ‘If any of this is remotely true, then Mr Goode Deed better know Mrs Ima Lawyer because we're going to sue for millions.'

Her brothers stayed by the fire, pulling apart the theory.

‘So why did Deed choose you? Us?' Luke asked Michael.

‘To go through that Knock-Knock Door. To come here.'

‘Yeah, but why?'

He pondered it a while then echoed the last words spoken by the Belgian in the blue suit: ‘A mystery is a dull question if there's not plenty of confusion first.'