Chapter 6

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

Thursday 23rd July 1998

Remember a few weeks back when Dakota said her aunt and uncle couldn’t make it down here just yet? “A week or so”, she said, or something like that.

It’s okay if you don’t. I’d forgotten by this point too.

School had now finished for all the other year groups, meaning Lucy was beginning her summer break too. She was bugging me daily to let her accompany me to Dakota’s… and had decided to offer me various used articles of clothing as though that would win me over. “Why yes, sister, I would love to have your freshly-removed bra!” Even as a teenage guy, there were lines I couldn’t cross.

I made it my mission to slip out when she was distracted. While she buzzed around the kitchen making herself a sandwich, I utilised the ninja skills I had picked up from assorted fiction and snuck out of the house. If she heard me, she didn’t chase after me.

The usual ten-minute walk brought me to Dakota’s door, and like every day, I rapped on the door. Same-old, same-old. And then… when the door opened, one of those faces I saw every day on the family portrait was much closer than normal, and in 3D.

“Which one are you?” he asked me bluntly.

“… err… Alex. Matthews. Blue…?”

“Right. I’m Neil Henderson.” He stretched a hand out for me to shake. “Dakota’s uncle. I own this house.”

“Nice to meet you,” I uttered, shaken by how intimidating he was in-person. I shook his hand, trying to match his vigour with my own. All the while, he glared down at me, as if assessing me. On my part, I did my best not to shrivel beneath the force of his gaze.

“Come on in, then,” the adult advised, stepping aside to allow me entry to the house. I shimmied past him, remaining under his forensic gaze all the while. Once I was clear of the doorway, he shut the door solidly.

Aaand that definitely didn’t help with the edge I was on. Out of the frying pan, into the fire…

Neil herded me into the living room, where Dakota was sat cross-legged on the sofa – her expression was uneasy before she saw me, but the moment she did, she smiled brightly.

“Hey Alex!” she chirped, which promptly brought a smile to my face too.

“Hey!”

“Before you ask, Mr Polite, I’m doing well thanks,” she pre-empted, and then patted the spot next to her. Neil weaved past me and took to one of the armchairs, while I did as I was told and sat beside Dakota. Behind us, mounted on the wall, was our whiteboard of classmates and prominent teachers: a full list of potential suspects in who could have selected myself, Bao, Kendal and Zahid to receive the Lokon weapons. Yes, after almost an entire month, we were finally putting the effort in! Hell, I was proud that we were able to collectively list every student in our year group. And Dakota had a fun time being regaled with numerous anecdotes about the suspects.

“So-”

A distinctive rhythmic knock on the front door cut Neil off before he could even really begin.

“That’ll be Kendal,” Dakota informed him; he nodded, standing back up again and heading off to answer the door with purpose.

“Why is he answering the door…?” I asked, already fairly confident that I knew the reasoning.

“‘It’s my house, so I’ll answer the door’,” the Irish girl spoke with deepened voice and a fair attempt at an English accent. “Plus I think he wants to check you all out one-on-one.”

Spot-on. Am I a good judge of character or is Neil just that obvious?

“Ah, I figured it was something like that…” I responded. “Nice impression, by the way.”

“Thank you,” she purred with a playful glint in her eyes. “I’ve been doing it since I was little, so I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Kendal scurried in at that point, leaping onto the sofa next to Dakota and all but curling up into the foetal position.

“Dakota, your uncle is scary as hell!” she whispered, clinging onto her until Neil entered the room once more – at which point, she quickly righted herself and put on casual airs.

“Did you have a good journey, Mr Henderson? Dakota said you live up north.” She’d plastered a grin onto her face, but the seams were visible.

“It wasn’t too bad,” Neil reasoned as he took to his seat again. “A couple of lunatics on the road but not many.”

“Ah, that’s great! My parents are always complaining about crazy drivers,” Kendal enthused… and onwards she marched, somehow swinging from one subject to the next in a period of intensive small talk punctuated only by the arrival of Zahid.

Since his outburst last week, Zahid had been a little more sullen than usual, and had been showing much less dismay at the behaviour of Bao and Kendal. Clearly, he still felt guilt for what happened. He’d actively played a couple of games with Bao, too. It was nice seeing him engaging with the rest of us. Now I sound like a counsellor…

Around fifteen minutes after I’d arrived, Bao finally showed up. For some reason, he was wearing a large sun hat, which he clearly had no intentions of removing even with Neil glaring at it dismissively at every opportunity. In any case, he was too busy looking around for somewhere to sit. It was like he expected an empty space to reveal itself if he looked long enough.

“You can grab a chair from the dining room, Bao,” Dakota suggested with a slight hush to her tone, as though making half an effort to keep it from Neil.

“It’s okay,” he replied. “Scooch up a bit, Alex.”

He headed towards me, giving me little opportunity to essentially throw myself into Dakota before he squeezed himself between me and the arm of the sofa.

“See, we’re good.”

Kendal now had her legs over the other sofa arm and her head nearly in Dakota’s lap; I almost had my cheek pressed to Dakota’s; the brim of Bao’s hat was poking my head while he sat half-crumpled like a discarded crisp packet.

“If this is good, I don’t wanna know what bad is…” I wheezed out.

“Okay, firstly, I would like to apologise for taking so long to get down here,” Neil began, leaning forward in the armchair. “We’ve been neck-deep in business with this scumbag called Locke…”

“Whooaaa… mercenary business?” Bao asked, grinning ear to ear.

“You could put it that way,” Dakota’s uncle smiled wryly. “He’s a lone wolf but he’s a master at cleaning up after himself. He’s practically invisible. So we’ve had to invest a lot of effort into trying to keep track of him. Today’s the first opportunity I’ve had to pay you a visit.”

“You are my new favourite person,” my hat-sporting friend declared in giddy awe.

“That means you’re not finished with him, right?” Zahid clarified from the other armchair.

“Correct.”

“And you’re not moving down here to take over just yet?”

Neil interlocked his fingers and nodded softly, stern expression back and unmoving.

“Cassie reckons we should let you keep on holding the fort. I’d rather take the weapons with me back up north… but then I understand that you’ve got all sorts of creatures coming after them, so that probably wouldn’t be ideal.”

“We’re doing fiiiine,” Kendal assured him, attempting to relax back for emphasis and winding up sprawled out on Dakota’s lap. “These things aren’t so hard to use, and fighting monsters is fun!”

“I’d like to say she doesn’t speak for all of us on that last part,” Zahid countered.

I wouldn’t have spoken out myself, but now that the ice was broken…

“We’ve been doing alright so far, and you can trust Dakota. She’s been great at keeping us on-track.”

… maybe a white lie, but then it’s not like she hadn’t been trying…

All the same, Neil smiled fondly at that.

“Of course. I’m really proud of her.” He turned to look at her. “I remember the day you were born… and now you’re a responsible young woman.”

“When was she born?” Bao asked, before adding, “we never asked her when her birthday is…”

“June 6th,” Dakota responded, blushing a little from her uncle’s praise. “Double sixes!”

“… huh.”

Bao’s brow furrowed.

“There’s got to be a way to make 1982 into another six…”

“Are you trying to make me out to be the devil?”

Oh, 666. I just got it!

“Dakota’s already explained Saoirse’s theory about the colours tying into your personalities and temperaments,” Neil continued, “so I understand that you’re likely the most adept at using them. That and your experience, as brief as it’s been so far…”

“Then why take them?” Zahid asked. He’d changed his tune… when this started, he’d considered the Lokon weapons a rude interruption to his summer break. Now he seemed genuinely invested in keeping this going.

“And err, who’s Saoirse?” Kendal added.

“My mam,” Dakota told her quickly, having to speak down to her lap.

“Because you’re a bunch of 16-year-olds dealing with a power far beyond comprehension.”

Neil’s fond smile had completely vanished once more. I could almost feel the pressure radiating from him at this point.

“No matter how well you’re doing, we don’t know what could happen. I can’t allow you to be put in harm’s way-”

“Bit late for that,” I noted. “We fought a giant lake monster, what can only be described as a razor-slinky…”

“And I’m sorry you even had to go through that much. But for all we know, that could be the tip of the iceberg. And Nick could resurface…”

“Who’s that? Dakota’s dad?”

Kendal looked up at Dakota innocently; Neil glanced at her too, as though to check her reaction.

“No,” Dakota grunted, looking right back at Neil with… well, see, I can’t really say exactly how her eyes looked. Startled? Urgent? Hurt? I felt that I’d stumbled upon an optical dialogue that I wasn’t meant to know of…

“Nick Riley is the man who created the Lokon weapons,” the adult explained. Dakota eased back in relief, and Kendal stared up at her chin in confusion. “Some of the details are still hazy after all this time, but he took over a Lokonessence research group by force and pressed for them to weaponise it. He managed to escape when we raided his place… went off the grid. We’ve no idea what he’s been up to, but now the weapons are out again, he could show up at any time.”

“… well, that’s a bombshell…” I noted.

“You can fight off surreal monsters just fine,” Neil continued, “but when it’s a flesh-and-blood human with a gun, what do you do?”

“If. Not when,” Zahid pointed out. “We can’t say for certain that he’ll show up again…”

“We took his creations from him. And he’s not like Locke – he has a whole network of people with their ears to the ground. You’re right that it’s not a certainty, but it’s a strong likelihood.”

“8 times 2 is 16, 1 plus 9 is 10, subtract the 10 from the 16 and you get 6!” Bao declared with relish.

“That’s great, Bao,” Zahid remarked, then leaned towards him a little. “Have you been listening for the past three minutes?”

“Err… nope. Sorry…” He seemed genuinely bothered that he’d zoned out quite so heavily. “What did I miss…?”

A deep groan rumbled out from below us. The coffee table shuddered, before promptly falling through the floor. The uneven hole roughly sealed back up, now forming a pair of lumpy lines in the exposed carpet. They moved around like…

Lips.

“Everybody up,” Neil ordered, getting to his feet and gesturing us towards the door to the hallway. Without missing a beat, we all got up (though not without struggle for us on the sofa… our reaction didn’t miss a beat, anyway) and hurried out. The six of us congregated in the safety of the hallway; Neil quickly scanned the floor there for any signs of unusual facial features.

“Ah, wait! My hat!” Bao cried out, feeling around his now-hatless head. We all glanced back into the living room in time to see Bao’s hat drifting gracefully down to the floor… and right into the open maw that now resided there.

The lips caught almost the entire hat, with only part of the brim sticking out – it sucked that in like spaghetti.

Bao growled lowly like an angry cat.

“We’re getting it back.”

“You want to dive inside the weird giant mouth to get your hat back?” I questioned, as Bao rolled his short sleeves up over his shoulders, marched two steps into the room, and turned back around with the same gusto to grab his backpack-stored weapons.

“Do you have an actual plan?” Neil asked, clearly on high-alert.

“Cut the thing open and get my hat back!” Bao declared, drawing his dual Lokon weapons out of the backpack and repeating his single-minded stride into the living room, donning his battle clothes as he did.

“Yeah, there’s no chance of stopping him,” I told Neil while grabbing my sword case.

“Just sit back and watch us kick some… floor-butt!” Kendal chimed in, likewise getting her bow.

It was almost surprising how quickly we all took hold of our weapons. Four momentary bursts of neon colour erupted in near-perfect sync as we triggered our costumes.

“Any damage to my house, you’re paying for it,” Neil warned us coarsely as we followed after Bao. I heard Dakota address him behind me:

“It’ll be fine. We already fought the front door and that’s still standing.”

Bao was on his knees in front of the mouth, trying to slash it with his tonfa blades. The lips were sealed tightly, and seemingly receiving no real damage. In fact, the floor seemed to be humming idly…

“Outta the way!” Kendal yelled, leaping onto the sofa. Bao scurried aside, clearly frustrated, and the mouth opened up almost in response. Forming an arrow in her bow, Kendal began opening fire directly into the mouth, one after another, over and over while yelling out a battle cry.

Once the barrage ended, the mouth closed up, smacking its lips in satisfaction.

Kendal looked at the rest of us with her ideas exhausted.

The floor started to bow, rumbling as an incline began to form with the mouth at the centre. The rest of us jumped up onto the furniture while the cabinet toppled over, its contents spilling and tumbling into the open mouth as it slowly sank deeper.

“Anyone else really worried about what’ll happen if it eats us…?” I asked, even though the answer seemed obvious.

“I-I mean, hey, Boba Fett came out of the Sarlacc in the EU…” Bao pointed out, riding atop the armchair that Neil had been sat in not two minutes ago.

“Why is it impervious to our attacks?” Dakota wondered aloud, trying to stare into the mouth as it guzzled up books, photos and videos. “Attack the lips, nothing. Attack the inside, nothing.”

The TV tumbled down into the gaping hole, now maybe almost two metres below normal floor level. The sofa and armchairs were leaning forward too – we awkwardly balanced atop the backs of the furniture, hoping beyond hope that we wouldn’t fall in.

“It keeps eating and eating… how big is its stomach?” Kendal whined, dread on her face.

“Oh!”

We all turned to look at Bao at once, to see him absolutely elated.

“Ooooh!”

“What?” Dakota asked franticly.

“In English,” Zahid added for good measure.

“What do you do when an enemy can absorb all your attacks?”

“… overload them…” I uttered, steadily grinning too. “Genius!”

“How do we do that? I shot, like, a gazillion arrows!” Kendal exaggerated while pretty much surfing on the back of the forward-slanting sofa.

“‘All your powers combined!’” Bao cried out, before swinging one of his weapons around in his hand so the blade was pointed forward. He stretched his arm out so the tip was as far forward as it could reach.

“Are you just… pulling random cartoon ideas out of your arse?” Zahid sighed as he held his axe out too, gripping onto the curtain rail to lean forward and extend his reach.

Dakota had an easy time reaching her spear tip over to join the meeting of weapons. Kendal juggled her bow, taking hold of the bottom edge and stretching as far as she could, just about getting the very tip to meet Dakota’s spear. Struggling to keep my footing, I too reached across the gobbling maw with my sword, connecting the end of the blade with the other weapons.

“… now what?” Kendal asked Bao, who was genuinely thrown by the question.

“Fire, I guess. 3, 2, 1, go!”

I’ll ask you what I thought in that moment… how do you fire a sword?

Still, the countdown was practically over before it began. All I really needed with this was to be creative and picture it, so I tightened my grip on the sword’s handle.

From the point where our weapons met, a torrent of multi-coloured liquid cascaded downwards and straight into the mouth of the floor. True to its nature, it gratuitously swallowed it all, onwards and onwards, and the whole scenario continued for a good twenty seconds…

Until a sickly grumble echoed out.

Like Vesuvius, the mouth erupted violently, unleashing a rainbow wave churning with everything it had swallowed. I was thrown from my vantage point and, by the time the wave dissipated, I found myself lying on the floor with my legs up on the sofa and Of Mice and Men lying on my chest.

The room was in complete and utter disarray. The others were all draped around like me, the coffee table on its side, the TV thankfully unbroken.

Taking his hat from nearby, Bao placed it back on his head.

“Ha.”

Neil returned to the room, surveying it as he’d surveyed us. We waited on-edge for the seemingly-inevitable scolding.

“Tidy this place up. And make sure you train, hard.”

He shook his head lightly.

“You might be able to handle yourselves, and if not, call us.”

… I’m not sure if that was a backhanded compliment or what, but it was approval and that was plenty.

We tidied the room up (thankfully and to no surprise, the remnants of the Lokon wave faded away very quickly) and hung around for a couple of hours before leaving early. Seemed nice to give Dakota and Neil some time together.

All of us left at once, and so Neil opted to see us off. As we donned our footwear, he drifted over us, and spoke with a quiet tone.

“Keep an eye on Dakota, okay? She gets lonely.”

That really dug into me, somehow. Leaving the house with the others, I looked back and thought about all the time Dakota had been spending there on her own over the past weeks. It didn’t feel right.

… and Neil’s car was parked right outside. I honestly don’t know how I missed that when I got there…