When I get home I go up to my bedroom. Some kind of hurricane must have hit it. And then I decide it must be a rabid dog. Or rats. Or a giant squirrel. Chunks of my duvet are missing. My pillow has a hole burrowed right through it. The lampshade is dangling, tattered and torn, and the window, which I closed before I left this morning, has a broken pane of glass.
‘What?’ I say aloud.
At first I think it must be something that’s come in from the outside. An invasion of giant hornets – or birds, or radioactive snakes.
Then I remember the deckchairs.
Frantically I search out the pirate tin. I find it under my bed. It’s been torn open from the inside, the metal lid curled back and savaged like a sardine tin. There are no deckchairs inside.
In fact, there are no deckchairs anywhere to be seen. I imagine them marauding and pillaging. Three vicious mousetraps pinching and snapping and tearing. I wonder what kind of damage they’d do.
It would look very much like this.
Eric’s dad opens the door. I rush past and race up the stairs to find Eric playing himself at chess.
‘What?’ he says.
‘The deckchairs,’ I say, and I explain what’s happened.
‘Oh, Tom,’ he says. He refrains from saying ‘You idiot’, but I know that’s what he means.
‘So I’ve no idea where they are,’ I say. ‘We need to find them before they get any bigger.’
‘How big do you suppose they are now?’ he asks.
I hold my hands out, measuring imaginary tiny deckchairs. ‘I guess they must be about a credit-card big.’
‘Really easy to find then,’ he says. ‘In a whole town.’
We start in the model village. I know if I was a miniature deckchair that’s exactly where I’d hide and I check for the first one I left by the cricket green. It’s not there any more. There’s no sign of it, not even any damage, and there’s no sign of the small ones either. Next, we try the crazy golf. I check all the holes. Eric checks all the Dingly Dell gnomes.
There are no actual deckchairs but something’s taken a bite out of one or two of the greens.
‘They’ve been here,’ I say.
‘But they’re not here any more,’ says Eric.
We drop down to the sea wall.
Today the sea is glassy and families have come out to enjoy the end of the afternoon sun. The mayor’s daughters are pedalling back and forth across the bay. Everything looks calm and lovely.
I lean on the railings and study the beach. ‘I suppose they might have tried to get home,’ I say.
‘Where is home?’ says Eric.
‘In a sort of cave at the end of the beach,’ I say, a sudden thought coming to me. ‘Do you suppose there’s nothing actually wrong with the beach itself?’
‘What do you mean?’ asks Eric, catching a wild curl of hair and jamming it under the hook of his glasses.
‘Well, I know everything that’s happened so far has been on the beach, and we assumed that it must be the sand or the sea or something. But supposing it isn’t?’
Eric rubs his chin in a thinking way. ‘Where’s the cave?’ he says in the end.
There are masses of people on the beach. We’re weaving our way through the family encampments when a shriek comes from above us on the sea wall.
‘AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGH!’ It’s about four million decibels and it comes from a woman and her daughter who race straight down the steps onto the sand and hop about as if they’ve been stung by something.
‘Get off!’ screams the girl. ‘Beastly thing!’
The mother stares in horror at her daughter and we run over. The child has a smallish deckchair clamped to her piggy nose, much like a large peg. ‘Ow! Ow!’ squeals the girl.
‘Stay still,’ says her mother, sticking her fingers into the deckchair and pulling.
‘OW! It hurts!’ The girl can’t stay still and the mother can’t get it off.
‘Try this,’ says Eric, pulling his Field Craft penknife from his pocket. ‘We might be able to force it open.’ He jams it into the deckchair mechanism and, oyster-like, forces it open.
‘Help!’ comes a shout from above us on the sea wall.
‘Go,’ Eric says to me, his fingers dangerously close to the deckchair’s snapping jaws. ‘We’re good here.’
‘Help!’
The cries seem to be coming from the amusement arcade. Amongst all the flashing lights and gurgling games, the owner is standing with his back to the wall, his eyes fixed on the dark space under the machines. I move closer but it’s not the space under the machines where the problem lies, it’s inside the machine. I press my nose to the glass and see two tiny deckchairs having fun dancing in the tuppence waterfall. They’re kicking the coins off the ledges and snip-snapping at the prizes, while the bigger one – the one Eric put under the microscope – is dancing inside the claw machine and throwing itself at the cuddly toys.
I could shrink them, but what good would that do? They’d still be inside the machines, still capable of pinching and biting. I need to get them out.
I rush to the change machine, stuff a pound coin in the top and it spews 2ps into a plastic tub at the bottom. I grab another plastic tub and stick it underneath the machine and then start feeding the coins into the top of the machine. It takes twenty-three coins to get the first cascade, and twelve to get the next, and on the third one of the deckchairs that was teetering on the edge slips over and shoots down into the tub. Before it can even stand up I grab another tub and jam it inside, pinning the chair to the bottom of the first tub.
Eric appears beside me, his hands clasped together, real tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. ‘This thing’s vicious,’ he says, gasping.
‘Quick,’ I say, picking up another tub, ‘drop it in here. It’ll work for a few minutes.’
Once we have both the chairs imprisoned we feed more 2ps into the machine. The last tiny deckchair is dancing and leaping and kicking the coins around inside. It seems oblivious to the disappearance of its companion. Just as the man who runs the amusement arcade seems totally ignorant of what has really happened and is still thumping a broom around underneath the machines. He obviously thinks he’s looking for an insect.
It takes two more pounds to catch the last deckchair, which tumbles into the tub in a shower of coins, and we jam it under the other two. Then I hold all three together in a quivering sandwich.
‘Now that one,’ I say, pointing to the claw machine.
The slightly larger chair has fastened itself round a fluffy dragon and is squeezing hard.
‘Those things are impossible,’ says Eric. ‘They never work.’
‘Hold this.’ I hand him the pile of twitching tubs and grab another pound coin from my pocket.
‘Have you only got one left?’ asks Eric.
I nod, slot the pound coin in and focus on the claw controls.
‘Are you any good at this?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I lie.
I’ve never actually managed to get anything before, but the deckchair has released the dragon and is flipping around inside the machine and the moment I lower the claw it clamps on to one of the open jaws.
‘Quick,’ says Eric.
Holding my breath I raise the claw and steer it over the tray.
It dangles there, still inside the machine, swinging and snapping.
‘Give it a shove,’ I say.
Eric thumps the machine, and the chair sways, swings and gives up its hold. It falls, wriggling and squeaking, until it wedges itself in the slot.
I grab it, pinching it shut while it flexes and squeals.
I feel 88% good, because I’m 12% worried about what to do with it next.
We step out of the arcade. ‘Now what?’ says Eric. ‘We can’t drown them – they’ll float.’
‘No – and I can’t shrink them either, there’s no point.’
‘Jacob,’ we say to each other at the same time.