Thor Is Locked in My Garage! (16 page)

Lewis pushed the book back into his bag. “If you think I’m going in there by myself,” he said, “you’re off your head.”

The boys could not have been more shocked if they’d come home to find Godzilla sitting on the roof, picking his teeth with the TV aerial.

There was no mistaking that bright green Morris Minor, a make of car most scientists were agreed had been extinct since the late Triassic. The purple dice hanging over the dashboard and the toy nodding dog scowling from the rear window were proof that it could only belong to Aunt Vivien.

They stood a while longer in silent terror, then eventually Greg said, “You go in first.”

“Why me?” Lewis’ voice was almost a shriek.

“You’re smaller. It’ll be easier for you to slip past her. I’ll be right behind you.”

With a fatalistic shake of the head Lewis squared his shoulders and walked up the front path. Greg followed a couple of paces behind. By the time they reached the door, Lewis had twisted the straps of his bag so tightly
around his fingers that they had turned white.

“Go on,” Greg urged. “Look, if we can make it upstairs, we can take turns hiding in the bathroom.”

Lewis reached out and took a tentative grip on the doorknob. He turned it slowly, then pushed the door open and made a mad dash for the stairs.

Aunt Vivien was waiting in the hallway and he ran headlong into an embrace that could have suffocated a rhino.

“Boys!” warbled Aunt Vivien in a voice that sent a cold shiver down their spines. “I’ve been waiting for you to get home!”

With a mammoth effort Lewis struggled free and staggered back, colliding with Greg who had come to a stunned halt just inside the doorway.

There she was, Aunt Vivien, large as life and about as welcome as a plague of midgies, teetering on a pair of high-heeled shoes. Her bosom heaved with emotion beneath a tent-like dress so garishly floral it almost made their eyes scream with pain. Her red-dyed hair was piled high upon her head like something constructed by the pharaohs.

“Come and have a hug, Greg!” she commanded with a falsetto warmth that didn’t mask the cold steel beneath. It was hard to tell if she was smiling under all that make-up.

Her open arms were about as inviting as the gaping jaws of a crocodile. Even in her stiletto heels she was still shorter than Greg, but she seemed to fill the space around her like a balloon inflating out of control. She took a purposeful step towards him.

Greg stood paralysed for a moment, trying to control his panic. Then all at once he started to sneeze.

The sneeze arrested Aunt Vivien in mid-step. Her painted mouth formed a horrified O and she retreated a pace, groping for a handkerchief to cover her nose and mouth.

Much as he resented his brother’s escape, Lewis couldn’t help but admire his quick thinking. Aunt Vivien hated any sort of illness and from the look on her face you’d have thought Greg was carrying the Black Death into the house.

As they trooped into the living room, Aunt Vivien pointed a finger at Greg. “Greg, I can fix you a remedy that will knock those germs right out of you.”

Greg blanched at the threat. He didn’t doubt for a moment that she could concoct a brew that would flush the marrow out of his bones.

“I’ll be all right,” he assured her. He sneezed again to be on the safe side. “Just let me get a sandwich.”

He headed for the kitchen, making sure to keep the sofa between himself and Aunt Vivien as extra
insurance against her unwanted attentions.

“I don’t think you’ll want to spoil your appetite,” she warned. She raised her pencilled eyebrows meaningfully as she spoke. “I have a treat in store for you.”

Lewis felt his stomach lurch as he followed Greg into the kitchen.

Even from behind Mum had the dejected appearance of a prisoner of war being subjected to forced labour. Her light brown hair was tied back in a tight, efficient bun and she was wearing the “practical” blue and white striped apron she only wore when she was doing something truly tragic like cleaning out the rubbish bins. She turned from the sink to greet Greg and Lewis as they walked in.

“Hello, boys. Did you have a good day at school?”

She summoned a fragile smile in an unconvincing pretence of normality. But the kitchen was not normal. It had been invaded by something that would blight their lives and their digestion for weeks to come, and there was no way to escape its malignant influence.

Only one thing about Aunt Vivien’s visits inspired more outright fear than the lady herself – her cookbook. There it squatted on the kitchen counter like an enormous, leering toad, its ancient cover a hundred mottled shades of brown.

Once, perhaps, it had been an ordinary cookbook, such as you might find in any happy kitchen, but that must have been centuries ago, back when the whole world was a more innocent place. Since then it had been stained and befouled with every manner of spice, sauce and condiment. Fragments of ill-smelling herbs were trapped between the ragged pages, all of which were scrawled with helpful hints in Aunt Vivien’s spidery hand. Some of the recipes had been borrowed from the savage tribes of Borneo and the Amazon jungles, while others were best suited to the minutes of a war crimes tribunal.

Lewis wrenched his eyes away from the book and said, “School was okay, Mum. You know.”

Mum was washing something sticky and unsightly from a wooden spoon. Whatever it was, it was stubborn and that did not bode well.

“Your mother and I have come up with something a little special for tea,” Aunt Vivien announced.

“Vivien says it’s going to be a real treat,” Mum said, glancing uneasily at the unfamiliar jars Aunt Vivien had piled up in front of the blender. She might as well have been announcing an incoming missile strike.

“I ate a big lunch,” Greg blurted out, futilely.

“Nonsense!” Aunt Vivien declared. “Feed a cold, starve a fever! After a couple of healthy meals I’ll have
him fit as a fiddle.”

She fixed a piercing glare on Greg, as though daring him to disagree.

“You two had better change and get cleaned up,” Mum said. “Lewis, I’ve put Vivien in your room, so you have to double up with Greg. I’ve already moved some of your things.”

Lewis sighed resignedly and slouched off upstairs after Greg. He risked a peek into his room as he passed and almost wept. A tower of luggage loomed over a wasteland of pink lace and delicate but tasteless ornaments, mostly statuettes of smug cats and simpering shepherdesses. Aunt Vivien had even gone so far as to bring her beloved Persian rug with its dizzying pattern of yellow and orange circles and triangles.

With a groan Lewis trailed despondently into the next room, where Greg was changing out of his school uniform while a song by his favourite metal band Rawkestra was blaring from the iPod. A rolled-up sleeping bag lay on the floor under the window where Lewis would be sleeping tonight.

Greg reached under the bed and plucked out two cans of cola. He tossed one to Lewis who caught it deftly. It was a gesture of solidarity in the face of disaster. They popped their cans in unison and drank as they got changed.

Lewis appreciated the effort Mum had put into tidying Greg’s room so that he had some space to store his stuff, but he wished she had moved his computer in here. He’d been counting on finishing his current game of Spellshooter tonight before working on the files for his school project. He briefly considered sneaking into his room while Aunt Vivien was in the kitchen, but quickly dropped the idea. Aunt Vivien didn’t tolerate her private space being intruded on, and she always knew. Maybe those prissy little shepherdesses kept a lookout for her, like guard dogs.

“Mum looks like she’s spent the day being prodded in the back with a bayonet,” said Lewis. “Why do you think she lets Aunt Vivien walk all over her like that? She doesn’t act that way with Dad, let alone you and me.”

“She used to be a nurse,” Greg explained with a shrug. “She’s obliged to take care of people, even Aunt Vivien.”

“Remember the last time she cooked us a meal?” Lewis recalled gloomily.

“I remember liver, butter beans, spinach and some kind of sauce made out of gooseberries,” Greg answered with a shudder. He cocked his head to one side in thought. “Maybe I could work this cold up into something serious. I’d let you catch it,” he added generously.

“Thanks for the offer,” said Lewis, “but you can’t trick your way out of Aunt Vivien. You might as well try to stop a tsunami by spitting at it.”

“Hurry up, boys! We’re just serving up!”

Aunt Vivien’s cry shook them like an air-raid siren.

The boys headed downstairs to the dining room, dragging their feet as if they were encased in three tons of cement. The table had been laid with the best cutlery and there were paper napkins decorated with pictures of rabbits. As the boys sat down, Greg picked up his napkin and said, “Is it just me or do these rabbits look scared?”

Their eyes turned apprehensively as the kitchen door swung open with the creaking menace of the entrance to a crypt. A cloud of vegetable odours wafted out. Lewis half expected the wallpaper to peel off and slip to the floor, begging for mercy.

Aunt Vivien emerged in ghastly splendour with a glass casserole dish wrapped in a potholder in her upraised hands, looking for all the world like a pagan priestess presenting a sacrifice to some bloodthirsty god. Mum followed woodenly behind like she was in the grip of a voodoo spell.

“Just you wait, boys, we’ve a few more things still to bring out of the kitchen,” Aunt Vivien informed them ominously.

Greg and Lewis looked at each other aghast. If either of them had the nerve to turn and bolt for the door, the other would surely follow. As it was, they were as much prisoners as their mother.

“It’s called Chicken Columbayo,” Aunt Vivien announced proudly, setting the dish down in the centre of the table.

Inside, oddly shaped pieces of vegetable and blackened shreds of what had once been meat floated in a thick green liquid. A shower of white flakes had been liberally sprinkled over the surface. If they were lucky, it was only coconut.

Further dishes were laid out before them like forensic evidence from a toxic waste disaster. From previous experience they recognised Aunt Vivien’s kidney beans in resin syrup and the notorious peppered potatoes, one nibble of which would have a professional fire-eater diving for the water jug.

“Adele has done a wonderful job, with just a teeny bit of supervision,” Aunt Vivien confided as she commenced filling their plates with a generous helping from each dish.

“Well, it’s mostly your work, Vivien,” Mum said. “All I did was help.” It was a weak stab at establishing her innocence.

Dinner commenced in a solemn silence, which Aunt Vivien took it upon herself to shatter brutally.
It was her habit throughout any meal to keep up an unstoppable stream of gossip about people no one else had ever heard of or would ever wish to meet, and she did this while simultaneously gobbling up huge portions without pausing for breath.

Lewis tried to shut his ears to her talk of cousin this and Mrs So-and-so from somewhere or other. He poked a timid fork at his plate and speared what he believed to be a piece of chicken. Only DNA testing could establish it for sure. Slowly, fearfully, he raised it to his lips.

Later, laid out full length on the bed, Greg was so pale he could have been taken for a corpse if not for the groans issuing from his trembling lips. Lewis leaned out of the open window, heedless of the danger of falling. If he was going to throw up, he only hoped it would happen while the Larkins’ dog was running past. That would pay it back for the time it had bowled him off his bike.

“What did she say that dessert was called again?” Greg asked without lifting his head.

“Scandinavian Ice Surprise,” Lewis answered distantly.

“It was like eating cellophane. Come away from that window! You’re not going to puke.”

“I will if I’m lucky.”

“That’s it!” Greg exclaimed, sitting up abruptly.
“That’s what I was going to tell you before we spotted Aunt Vivien’s car!”

“That feels like an awful long time ago,” Lewis moaned.

Greg swung his legs over the bedside and stood up. “Stop malingering,” he said, seizing Lewis by the collar and turning him around. “You can’t let one bad meal finish you off.”

“Up until a few seconds ago you were no picture of health yourself,” Lewis accused.

“That was before I remembered my idea. I think I may have found a way around that test.”

“You’re not going to sleep with a pyramid under your bed again, are you? That didn’t work last time.”

“That was a valid experiment. No, this time you’ve given me the answer.” He jabbed Lewis in the chest with his finger.

“Hey, I only suggested you study.”

“Yes, you did, but I’m willing to overlook that.”

He pulled a book from the pile Lewis had set neatly on the desk, knocking the rest of them to the floor. It was
The Folklore of Time
by Lucas Oberon Key. His eyes agleam with excitement, he flicked through it then flourished the open book triumphantly under Lewis’ nose.

“Just take a look at
this
!”

At that moment there came a brisk knock at the door. Before they could say anything, it opened and Mum’s face appeared through the gap. Greg shut the book and stuffed it under his arm.

“Can’t you two come downstairs and be sociable for a while?” Mum demanded sharply.

The notion of deliberately spending time in Aunt Vivien’s company left the boys too numb to respond.

“Vivien doesn’t have any close family to fill her time, so she likes to be helpful,” Mum said, piling on the pressure. “When she heard Dad was going away, she came straight here to help us out.”

There was a brief pause when fate hung in the balance, then Greg brandished the book and said, “I’ve got to study. I’ve got a big test tomorrow.”

Mum looked to Lewis for confirmation.

“It’s true, Mum,” Lewis said. “He has got a test.”

“And what about you, young man?”

“I need to work on my school project,” Lewis answered, plucking up one of the books Greg had knocked to the floor.

Several seconds ticked by as Mum steamed in silence. “You’d better study,” she said at last, “or you’ll be dusting and carrying laundry for the rest of the year!”

Both boys nodded dumbly. They were well aware that Mum could make good on her threat.

She closed the door and her footsteps descended to where Aunt Viven waited. They could hear the distant buzz of a game show coming from the TV and Aunt Vivien’s high-pitched laugh piercing the air like the sound of a drill.

“Boy, Mum’s being a real ogre!” said Lewis.

“At least she let us stay out of the danger zone,” Greg said.

“So what were you going to tell me that’s so important?” Lewis asked, dropping the book onto Greg’s desk, which was already halfway back to its usual state of disorganised clutter.

“Oh yes!” said Greg.

He darted a conspiratorial glance around the room before shutting the window, as though there might be someone outside listening. Lewis half expected him to search for hidden microphones. Greg opened the book on the folklore of time and presented it to Lewis with the victorious air of Sherlock Holmes exposing a murderer.

“What do you think of that?” he asked with upraised eyebrows.

Lewis read the page out loud.

“In the Orkney Islands of Scotland this rhyme, relating to a lost day of the week, was recorded by the Reverend Murdo Abercrombie in 1857. Its meaning, however, is obscure.”

“So?”

“Read the rhyme, idiot!” Greg insisted.

Lewis read aloud in a long-suffering tone:

“You see, it’ll be a
lucky day,”
said Greg. “And that’s just what I need – luck.”

“It says
Lokiday,
not
Luckyday.”

“So what? They spelled Thursday wrong too.”

“Actually Thor was the Norse god of thunder,” Lewis began. “Over the years the pronunciation—”

“Whatever! The main thing is that it’s tonight, right? Thursday night.”

Lewis treated his brother to as blank a look as he could muster.

“Don’t you see?” Greg exclaimed impatiently. “That’s all I need: just one day of good luck.”

Lewis experienced a sinking feeling in his overfull stomach. “Is this going to be like the time you had us
both dress in opposing primary colors so that when we stood together nobody would be able to see us?”

“It’s not my fault that didn’t work,” Greg asserted bullishly. “Blame it on science.”

“You don’t get science from
The Amazing Book of Incredible Feats,”
Lewis objected. “You have to join facts together and make something sensible out of them.”

“Look, we say this rhyme and we’ll have a lucky day,” Greg persisted. “It’s not brain surgery. Don’t you want to be lucky?”

Lewis didn’t have to think hard to come up with one area of his life where he’d like to be lucky.

“I suppose so,” he agreed grudgingly. “But I don’t think that’s what it means. I think what it does is kind of conjure up this day that’s disappeared. It brings it back.”

“Okay, at worst, it’s a whole extra day to study, and it might be lucky, too. Look, it says it takes two to make it work. So, are you in?”

“But does it make any sense that—”

“Switch off your brain for a second!” Greg commanded. “Your hair’s starting to sizzle. Will you do it?”

Seeing that he had no choice, Lewis nodded.

“That’s my boy!” Greg congratulated him with a hearty slap on the back.

This only confirmed to Lewis that he was making a big mistake. But unlike Greg’s other schemes, if this
didn’t come off, then nothing would happen. Or would it?

Greg stretched out his forearm and checked his watch in a brisk, military fashion. “Just five hours to go. What’ll we do until then?”

“You could always try breaking your golden rule and studying for the test.”

“Studying? Don’t be daft. I told you, tomorrow’s going to be my lucky day.”

Around ten thirty Mum found an excuse to unglue herself from Aunt Vivien. She came to Greg’s bedroom door but was too disgusted with her sons to look in.

“Are you in bed yet?” she asked icily through the door.

“Yes, Mum!” they lied in chorus.

Mum was too dispirited by an evening in Aunt Vivien’s company to press the point and slipped away to her bedroom before Aunt Vivien could call her back.

Lewis was in his pyjamas and climbing into the sleeping bag. He shut his eyes wearily, hoping that Greg would be so tired he’d forget all this nonsense about reciting the rhyme at midnight.

Lewis was having that dream where he turned up for
school with no clothes on when a sharp poke in the ribs awoke him. “Come on, dozy, it’s nearly time,” he heard Greg say.

He struggled out of the sleeping bag and stifled a yawn.

Greg looked at his watch. “What time do you make it?”

Lewis looked blearily around him and picked his watch up from a nearby chair. “Eleven fifty-five.”

Greg frowned. “I’ve got ten to midnight.”

Lewis hated being forced out of a sound sleep and his tone was testy. “Yours hasn’t worked right since that time you pretended to swallow it.”

“I won the bet, didn’t I?” Greg wrinkled his nose. “We need to be accurate if this is going to work. Hey, I know.”

He stepped over to the window and yanked it open. “If we listen out we’ll hear the town hall clock when it chimes midnight. As soon as it starts, we say the rhyme.”

Lewis shivered as a cold breeze blew into the room.

“Fine, but once we’re done, can we close the window and get some sleep?”

Greg frowned at him. “You might show a little enthusiasm. You know, you can’t achieve anything in life if you won’t believe in yourself.”

Lewis’ tolerance snapped. “This isn’t about believing in myself. It’s about you making me say this stupid rhyme because you’re too lazy to do a little hard work.”

Greg put his hands on his hips and regarded his brother through narrowed eyes. “We’re both under a lot of stress right now, with Aunt Vivien and everything, so I’m going to assume you didn’t mean that to sound as judgemental as it did.”

Lewis sighed and glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly time.”

Greg picked up the book and flipped to the right page. Then he stood by the window with his ear cocked. When they heard the first chime of the town hall clock sounding in the distance, he pulled Lewis to his side.

“Okay, start reading.”

“The Lokiday—”

“Not the title, you plank,” Greg interrupted. “Just the rhyme. Start on the next chime.”

They started together on the next stroke of twelve.

“The day that was lost returns in time

If two will but recite this rhyme.”

Greg sped up, trying to complete the rhyme before the clock finished striking. Lewis almost got tongue-tied trying to keep pace with him.

“At Thorsday’s end but say it fine,

Restore the day that once was mine.”

At the last word Greg shut book with a flourish. “Close the window, will you? There’s a draft.”

Lewis pulled the window shut and yawned.

“Well, do you feel lucky?” he asked.

“It’s not about
feeling
lucky,” Greg retorted scornfully. “We need to test it scientifically.” His gaze swept across the room. “I know.”

He hauled open a drawer in his desk and raked through the assorted debris it contained. Some bottle tops and pencils fell out before he triumphantly lifted up a deck of cards. He thrust them at Lewis.

“Shuffle them and deal me five cards.”

“Why?”

“It’s a poker hand. If I get four aces or a full house, I’ll know it worked.”

Lewis opened his mouth to object then thought better of it. The sooner they got this over with, the better. He took the deck out of its box and shuffled it clumsily.

“Lewis, you’re going to drop them all over the floor.”

“I’m not a Las Vegas dealer, you know,” grumbled Lewis.

He carefully dealt out five cards face down on the bed.

Greg snatched them up and pressed them to his chest as though afraid to look. Slowly he lowered them
and looked. His face fell.

“These are total rubbish.”

Lewis shrugged. “At least there wasn’t any money riding on it.”

Greg chewed his lip thoughtfully. “We should try it again, just to make sure.”

Lewis heard his sleeping bag call and thought fast. The way things were going, he was either going to be dealing out cards all night or listening to Greg complain until dawn about his bad luck.

“It probably won’t work till morning,” he said. “That’s when the day starts.”

Greg considered this. “You may be right. Let’s get some sleep. You look like you could use some.”

“Right,” Lewis said under his breath.

He burrowed as deep as he could into the sleeping bag and closed his eyes tightly. It was a good idea to doze off before Greg started snoring.

This time he had a dream in which Mum and Dad were sent abroad on a mission for MI5 and he and Greg had to go and live with Aunt Vivien. He was mumbling to himself about going out for a pizza when he awoke with a shudder. The sun was shining through the curtains and the dream quickly vanished from his mind.

He didn’t know yet that the day which lay ahead would be worse than any dream he had ever had.