The Day the World Went Loki (2 page)

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.

Mum’s knock at the door was a lot heavier than usual. So heavy the door shook on its hinges.

“Rise and shine, boys! It’s a school day!” she called.

Lewis heard her walk away and there was something unusual about that too.

“Do you hear that?” he asked.

“What?” Greg responded groggily.

“It sounds like Mum’s dragging something across the floor behind her. A sack or something.”

“Maybe it’s Aunt Vivien’s dead body. Why was she trying to smash the door down?”

“I’ve got no idea. Come on, let’s try to get out of here before Aunt Vivien wakes up.”

“Right, you go first.” Greg yawned.

Lewis shambled off to the bathroom. He noticed with bleary eyes that the bathroom mirror now had an ebony frame carved with intertwining serpents. Returning to the bedroom, he became aware of how rough the carpet felt beneath his bare feet. He glanced down and saw that it was gone. In its place was a coarse mat woven from rushes or some such thing. He looked around for
more strangeness and saw that the portrait of Grandad McBride that normally hung on the wall had been replaced with a painting of a grinning leprechaun.

The explanation was depressingly obvious, and it was just more bad news. Aunt Vivien suffered from occasional fits of redecorating. She had house-sat for them three years ago when they were on holiday in Canada, and they returned home to find a flea-infested moose head frowning down at them from above the TV set and strangely patterned Tibetan curtains hanging from most of the walls.

Dad had muttered that he would have felt more at home living in an igloo, and as soon as Aunt Vivien had completed her cheery farewells, all of her “little touches” were consigned to the darkest corner of the cellar.

It looked like she was at it again. She must have done it during the night while they were all asleep, as a surprise.

“Aunt Vivien’s redecorating the house,” Lewis reported gloomily when he returned to the bedroom.

“If I have to eat one more of her meals, I’ll probably redecorate the house with the result,” Greg said, dragging himself to his feet and shuffling off to the bathroom.

By the time he returned Lewis was fully dressed.

Greg scratched his head. “How can Mum let her get away with this?” he wondered as he threw on his
clothes. “If she keeps on changing the house, maybe she can find some new people to come live here, too.”

“That would suit me fine.”

“We’d better eat breakfast before something happens to that as well.”

They stepped out and padded past Lewis’ room where they thought they could hear Aunt Vivien breathing softly. She rarely got up before ten o’clock and if she’d been up all night redecorating the house she might not get out of bed before noon.

Further gruesome signs of her handiwork greeted them downstairs. There was an enormous stuffed bat hanging on the wall. In the bookcase the encyclopedias and Dad’s collection of spy novels had been replaced by rows of ancient volumes with mouldering covers.

Half the furniture had been replaced by crude tables and chairs carved from gnarled oak, many of which were decorated with vine patterns and gargoyle faces. Family photographs had been displaced by miniature paintings of spiders, wolves and odd half-human creatures Lewis couldn’t even put a name to.

“This is so random!” he said, shaking his head.

“I think it’s time we called in professional help,” said Greg.

“You mean a psychiatrist?”

“I mean the SAS. Somebody’s got to get rid of her
and make the world safe for civilisation.”

Lewis stopped short, scowling. “You know, she couldn’t have done all this in one night. Not by herself. You don’t suppose she made Mum help her, do you?”

“I wouldn’t put anything past that woman.”

They entered the dining room to find the table had been laid for breakfast. They sat down, casting their eyes uneasily over the pictures and ornaments, which had undergone the same sort of transformation as the rest of the house.

“I feel like I’ve moved into Frankenstein’s castle,” Lewis said.

Mum’s voice came from the kitchen: “Breakfast will be right out!”

Greg lifted up his cereal spoon and made a face. All the cutlery had been replaced with crude, heavy items made from a dull, grey metal. “Aunt Vivien better not mess around with my breakfast,” he groused. “Whatever you do, you don’t interfere with a man’s breakfast. It’s the cornerstone of the whole day. If something goes wrong with breakfast, the knock on effect could spread to the whole country. It could devastate the economy. I’ve half a mind to call our MP, whoever he is.”

At that moment the kitchen door opened and something colossal came stomping out. It was about seven feet tall with green skin and tufts of black fur on
the back of its ham-like hands. It had a big, knobbly face and nostrils almost as wide as its round, yellow eyes. A long, thick tail was dragging heavily across the floor behind it. It was wearing Mum’s green summer dress and white apron.

“Just let me know if you want more,” the monster offered, sounding just like Mum. It set a bowl down in front of each of them, then turned round and started back towards the kitchen.

The boys looked down, almost white with shock. Sitting in front of each of them was a bowl filled with a noxious yellow goo that looked like it had been scooped off the surface of a swamp. To add insult to injury, there was a fly floating on the top of Lewis’ helping. He hoped for the fly’s sake that it was dead.

He tried to say something to Greg, but all that came out was a choking noise.

The sound caused the green creature to halt at the kitchen door and lumber back to the table. It opened its wide gash of a mouth and Mum’s voice came out. “Is everything all right, boys?”

They both stared at her, unable to speak, until a vexed frown began to form on that monstrous face.

Lewis’ mouth had gone completely dry, but he gathered the nerve to utter a single word. He pointed an unsteady finger at his bowl and whimpered, “Fly…”

The creature leaned over him, casting a vast shadow across the table. “Oh, don’t worry about that,” it said in Mum’s sweetest voice.

The cavernous maw gaped open and a long, forked tongue whipped out to pluck the fly out of the gloop and pop it into the waiting mouth. The creature smacked its lips and lumbered back towards the kitchen.

“Now get on with your breakfast, boys,” Mum’s voice called. “You don’t want to be late for school.”

Greg won the race to the top of the stairs, but he had the good grace not to slam the bedroom door shut until Lewis had dived in after him. It only took them about half a minute to get the barricade up, and when they’d finished they slumped on the floor side by side, their backs resting against the heap of furniture and boxes now blocking the door.

“How long do you think we can stay in here?” Lewis asked once he’d caught his breath.

Greg’s voice was shaky. “Until we starve.” He drew a hand across the back of his mouth. “You know, this goes way beyond a spot of redecorating.”

“Come on, you can’t think Aunt Vivien’s to blame for this.”

“Why not? It’s that muck she fed as last night. Look what it’s done to Mum. It’s only a matter of time before we start to mutate as well. Come to think of it, you
already look kind of green.”

Lewis ignored him and tiptoed over to the window. He gingerly eased aside the curtain and looked out over the back garden.

“What do you see?” Greg asked, sliding across the floor to his side.

“That well for one thing,” Lewis answered. “Do you think Aunt Vivien dug that overnight?”

He pointed to a round well, which now occupied the centre of the garden. A bucket stood to one side of it with a rope tied to its handle.

Greg rubbed his eyes. “We’re hallucinating,” he said firmly. “She’s drugged us. She put some kind of mushrooms in the food last night.”

Lewis gave him a sceptical look. “It can’t be a hallucination. We wouldn’t both be seeing the same thing.”

“Then it’s a mirage,” Greg insisted.

“You only get mirages in the desert. It’s the sunlight refracting—”

Greg silenced him with an upraised hand. “Never mind. It’s obvious what’s going on. This is just a dream.”

“You think we’re both having the same dream?”

“Of course not, you idiot. You’re not really here at all. You’re just part of my dream.”

“Then why are you bothering to talk to me if I’m
not real?”

“I’m not talking to you. I’m only dreaming that I’m talking to you.”

“Then why don’t you go ahead and wake yourself up?”

“What, and lose my beauty sleep?”

“Won’t that be better than being stuck in this nightmare?”

“You can’t just wake yourself up,” Greg objected. “If you could nobody would ever oversleep.”

“It’s got to be worth a try,” Lewis said.

He walked over to the bulletin board and pulled a pin out of it, causing a newspaper clipping about a football match to flutter to the floor. “Here, stick this in your backside.”

“What sort of a nutcase do you take me for?”

“It won’t really hurt. It’s only a dream, isn’t it?”

“If it won’t hurt, then stick it in
your
backside.”

“How will that wake
you
up?”

“It probably won’t,” Greg agreed, “but right now I could use a good laugh.”

“Take it from me, I’m really here and I’m awake. You’re not dreaming me.”

“So what’s your theory?” Greg demanded.

Lewis backed away and sat down on the bed. “All I can think of is that this is Lokiday.”

“Lucky, right. We have to eat slime for breakfast and
Mum’s turned into an orc.”

“No, Lokiday,” Lewis insisted, picking up
The Folklore Of Time
.

“You mean the rhyme?” Greg exclaimed, snatching the book from him. He flipped quickly to the page.

“I told you it was supposed to call up an extra day, not one that would be lucky for you.” Lewis was too shaken to be smug. “Remember, it says, ‘The day that was lost returns in time’. Suppose this is some sort of a lost day.”

“You mean like the ones they rioted about back then?”

“Could be. Maybe even older than that.”

“But if it’s just another day, why is all this weird stuff going on?”

“Maybe if you give me the book I can find out.”

Greg thrust the book at him and Lewis began to study it. He started with the Lokiday rhyme then flicked back and forth through the pages, searching for some further clue to what was happening.

“This book is a shambles!” he groaned. “There isn’t even an index.”

“If you hadn’t brought that stupid book here in the first place,” said Greg, “we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“I never said, ‘Hey, let’s recite this rhyme at midnight.’”

“Oh, like you couldn’t tell it was some kind of magic.
Don’t you pay any attention to what you’re doing? Would you bring dynamite into the house and stick it in the microwave?”

“Magic?” Lewis repeated. “I suppose it is magic.”

Greg stopped to look around him. “Why hasn’t it changed my room?”

“Because it couldn’t be in any worse shape than it is,” Lewis responded bitterly.

“No, seriously. The rest of the house has changed, even the back garden.”

Lewis drummed his fingers on an open page. “Maybe since we were making it happen, the spell couldn’t affect us, or the place we were in, without undoing itself. It’s like, if you’re painting a floor, you can’t paint the part you’re standing on.”

“How far do you think it goes?” Greg asked.

“What do you mean?”

Greg looked meaningfully towards the window. “Do you think it’s just affected our house, or has it changed the whole town?”

Lewis looked outside. “You can’t see much from here. The trees block the view.”

“Do the trees look bigger to you?”

Lewis nodded reluctantly. He was about to speak when a flock of huge, black ravens erupted from the branches of the nearest tree with a raucous cry that
sent him staggering backwards. They flapped up into the sky and wheeled away over their roof.

Before he could say anything, Lewis saw that Greg had put a finger to his mouth, signalling him to silence. Heavy footfalls were crossing the hall outside. Mum’s voice sounded incongruously through the door.

“You didn’t eat your breakfast,” she called accusingly.

The boys looked at each other and Greg nudged Lewis to respond.

“We remembered some work we had to finish before school,” he called back. “We had to come right up here and do it. Sorry… Mum,” he added, trying to keep his voice from becoming a squeak.

There was a pause and they both eyed the doorknob anxiously.

“All right,” Mum said. “But don’t be late for school. Remember the fuss your dad made last time.”

They heard her turn and lumber away, dragging her tail behind her. The boys let out a heartfelt sigh of relief.

“I’ve got an idea,” Greg said.

He flicked on his radio, but all he could pick up were waves of static. He switched it off and both of them reached for their phones. The message NO SIGNAL confirmed that they were completely cut off.

Greg tossed his phone on the bed. “So where does that leave us?”

“We could go out and explore,” Lewis said. He did not sound keen.

“If we don’t go to school soon, Mum’s liable to smash the door down,” Greg said.

“She could do it, too,” Lewis added with a grimace.

“Look, Mum didn’t seem to think there was anything strange about us. If we keep our cool, we can stroll around outside. Maybe we can find some other normal people.”

“It would be a good idea to get out of here before Aunt Vivien wakes up,” Lewis added. “If Mum’s turned into a seven-foot tall green monster, what do you think
she’s
turned into?”

“I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Come on, let’s get the barricade down,” Lewis said, taking hold of a chair leg. He saw that a pensive expression had spread over Greg’s face. “What’s the problem?”

“I was just wondering, how do you paint the piece of floor you’re standing on?”

Lewis took a deep breath. “Could we worry about that some other time?”