Granny (10 page)

Joe squirmed and kicked, only entangling himself all the more. Somewhere in his mind he swore never to eat another fish stick. But it was too late for that.

“Bring him forward!” the old woman cried.

With the cackling of the grannies all around him, Joe was dragged onto the stage.

“
Y
ou all know me,” the oldest granny exclaimed.

Joe was on the stage beside her, struggling and straining. The grannies had not only tied him up—that would have been bad enough. They had also fastened him into a straitjacket that they had evidently knitted themselves since it was made out of pink wool.

“My name is Elsie Bucket,” the woman went on, “and I am the oldest granny in Great Britain. One hundred and six years old today!”

There was loud applause from the audience, but Elsie Bucket did not smile. She held up a gray, skeletal hand for silence.

“Yes,” she said. “I have received seven telegrams from the Queen. Seven telegrams! But have I so much as received one single present? Not on your bippy!” She sniffed. “So much for the Queen!”

She walked slowly to the front of the stage.

“I am old, and like you, fellow grannies, I do not wish to be old. All my life I have thought about this. I was so afraid of being old that I never actually enjoyed being young. Fortunately, however, I was a brilliant scientist. It was I, for example, who invented the telephone. I can't tell you how angry I was when my sister called me to tell me it had already been invented. Even so, I managed to invent the telephone bill. From there I went on to invent the electricity meter, cable television, and later, the wheel clamp.

“However, my greatest invention has taken me sixty years. It is here tonight. You, dear grannies, have all brought with you one component—as I asked you to do in this very room last year. What a wonderful achievement! From a simple light-bulb to an electrostatic de-energizer, from a long-life battery to a teaspoon of nuclear fuel, you have all brought exactly what I asked of you. But here I must say a special thank-you to Ivy Kettle.” Joe stopped struggling and glowered at his granny, who was sitting in the third row with a smug look on her face. Elsie Bucket gestured at her. “It was Ivy who provided us with the single most important—and potentially the most difficult—component of all. He may be small and rather unhygienic. But he's real. He's alive (for the time being). And he's here. She brought us a boy!”

“A boy! Oh, joy! A boy!”

The grannies had all gone into ecstasies like very religious people at a prayer meeting. Joe felt the blood rush into his face as they all gazed at him, screeching and clapping, pointing and grinning. One granny had become so excited that she had gone red in the face and keeled over in her chair—but everyone ignored her in the general chaos. Joe was certain that at any moment he would wake up in bed. It was all a nightmare. It had to be. To be tied up in a pink straitjacket in a Devonshire hotel with over five hundred grannies hooting at you—that sort of thing just couldn't possibly happen in the real world.

Except that it had. This was no dream.

“And so, fellow grannies, no more talk! No more waiting! Let us do what we have so looked forward to doing. And let me show you my invention. Grannies—I give you…the Grannymatic Enzyme Extractor!”

There was a hush in the room as the gold curtain slid back and even Joe gasped when he saw what had been constructed there at the back of the stage.

At first he thought it was an electric chair. An ordinary wooden chair was indeed part of it, with coils and wires twisting around the legs and vanishing under the seat. But there was much more to it than that. A maze of glass pipes and tubes zigzagged and spiraled away into a line of bottles, some of them empty, some of them filled with a dark green liquid. A circular gauge reading EMPTY in blue and FULL in red hung from a tangle of wires, with a golden arrow waiting to travel the distance between the two. The object that looked like a glass-and-steel tuba—Joe had seen it briefly in the reception area—was now suspended above the machine. Joe realized it could be lowered onto the head of whoever sat there. It in turn was connected to a complicated metal structure surrounding the chair and—Joe swallowed hard when he saw this—there were no fewer than thirteen large hypodermic syringes pointing inward, attached to it at different levels. Joe imagined himself sitting in the chair (somehow it wasn't very hard to do) and saw that there would be two needles pointing at his ankles, two at his knees, two at his thighs, one at his stomach, one at the small of his back, two at his elbows, two at his neck, and one—the highest—at the center of his forehead. The syringes, big enough to inject a horse, were built into gold magnetic coils. All of them were wired up to work automatically.

The whole ghastly contraption was connected to a control desk a few feet away. This was made up of the usual array of dials and gauges, flashing lights and buttons that he had seen on every episode of
Star Trek.
The only difference was that it had also been decorated with a small lace cloth and a flower in a pot. There was a comfy armchair behind it for the operator to sit in.

“Take him!” Elsie Bucket commanded.

Joe lashed out as the four grannies who had captured him pounced on him again, giggling and wheezing. But he was helpless. As old and as weak as they were, there were four of them and he was pinioned by the straitjacket. They pulled him, dragging his heels across the stage, and tied him into the chair. Two leather straps went over his legs, two more across his chest, one on each arm, and a final one around his throat. There was nothing he could do.

He sat, facing the audience, half blinded by the spotlights that were trained on him. He could just make out the small round heads staring at him like so many coconuts behind the glare, but he was aware only of the thirteen needles pointing toward him. His hand grappled for a wire or a circuit he could pull... anything to sabotage the machine. But he had been tied too tightly and the chair had been too well designed. Gritting his teeth, he slumped back. Now he could only wait.

“The Grannymatic Enzyme Extractor!” Elsie Bucket announced, moving into the light. “Last year, you will recall, we tested my elixir of life, the secret potion that would make me and all my dear granny friends young again. Over one hundred ingredients had gone into my elixir of life! Avocado oil, ginseng, yogurt, royal jelly, raw oysters, ox blood, iron oxide, zinc, milk of magnesia, yak's milk, cactus juice, the yolk of an ostrich egg, and much, much more. But it didn't work. And why didn't it work? Because there was one missing ingredient.

“Enzymes are the stuff of life. Without enzymes, there can be no life. And this boy's enzymes, added to my wonderful elixir, will turn back the clock and instantly return us to our glorious, wonderful youth! And what about this glorious, wonderful youth?” Elsie Bucket pointed at Joe. “Sadly, the operation will kill the child. But I am sure even he won't mind when he knows how happy he will be making all of us.”

“I do mind!” Joe shouted.

Elsie Bucket ignored him. “In a minute I will flick the switch,” she said. “The machine will do the rest. His enzymes will be sucked out of him. They will travel down these pipes here…” She pointed them out. “They will be thoroughly disinfected and then added to my elixir here.” She tapped on one of the jars of green liquid. “From just one boy I estimate we can make five hundred doses, enough for everyone here! By the time the process is over,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “the boy will be as shriveled as an overcooked cocktail sausage. If you find this disturbing, I suggest you don't look.”

“I find it disturbing!” Joe cried out. But Elsie Bucket was already leaning over him, lowering the tuba contraption onto his head. “A little electromassage,” she whispered to him. “Very painful, but it helps the enzymes flow.”

“You're crazy!” Joe spat out the words.

“How dare you talk to an old lady like that!” Elsie Bucket smiled, her face close to his, and Joe saw her gray tongue loll out of her mouth like a dying slug, then curl back to lick her ancient, discolored teeth, and suddenly he was more nauseous than afraid.

“Now!” Elsie Bucket sang out the word.

“Now!” the grannies chorused.

“No!” Joe strained with every muscle, but the straps that held him were too thick.

Elsie Bucket capered over to the control desk and sat down in the armchair. She raised her hands and flexed her fingers as if she were a concert pianist. Joe heard the bones clicking against one another.

Then she stabbed down.

The machine hummed and whirred into life. The green liquid bubbled. The lightbulbs blinked and flickered. The leather straps around him seemed to tighten, but perhaps that was his own body tensing up as it all began. Electricity buzzed through the tuba helmet, which began to grow hot against his head. Joe clawed at the arms of the chair as slowly, one after another, the hypodermic needles shivered and then began to move forward. The arrow on the EMPTY and FULL gauge trembled excitedly. The whole thing was rattling and shaking, as indeed were all the watching grannies.

The hypodermic syringes slid forward.

Elsie Bucket yanked at a lever, her eyes bulging, her whole face twitching with delight.

The green liquid in the bottles surged and boiled. Electricity flickered. The needles moved again.

Joe opened his mouth to scream.

And then all the lights went out and everything stopped.

For a long moment nobody did anything. Then Joe heard Elsie Bucket's voice calling out of the darkness. “Don't panic, grannies! It's only a fuse. We'll have it fixed in a moment!”

But even as she spoke, Joe was aware of someone close by him. He felt warm breath on his cheek. A pair of hands reached out to undo first the strap around his throat, then the ones on his arms. And at the same time a voice spoke to him. It was a voice he recognized, a woman's. But he still couldn't see.

“Run for it, Joe,” the voice whispered. “Get out of here and get back to London. You can do it!”

The remaining straps fell away. The knitted straitjacket was cut through with a single stroke. There was a pause and Joe realized that his mysterious rescuer had gone and that he was once more on his own. He stood up.

The lights came back on. The Grannymatic Enzyme Extractor shuddered back into life.

Elsie Bucket stood inches away, staring at him, her face twisted with fury. “Stop him!” she screamed in a voice that could have broken glass. “He's getting away!” At the same time she reached out to grab Joe herself.

Joe did the only thing he could. He twisted to one side and pushed Elsie Bucket away. Elsie gave a small, despairing gurgle and fell backward into the seat of the Extractor just as the thirteen needles jerked forward like angry snakes. Joe didn't see what happened next. He was already running toward the edge of the stage, searching for a way out. But he heard Elsie Bucket's final scream as she was thoroughly punctured. He heard the great wail from the grannies in the audience. And he heard the sucking and bubbling as the Grannymatic Enzyme Extractor did what it had been built to do.

Elsie Bucket had received her last royal telegram. The machine had attempted to extract her enzymes but, having failed to find any, had extracted everything else. There was nothing left of the granny apart from her clothes, punctured in thirteen places. These were now draped over the wooden seat with a few wisps of black smoke curling upward into the light. At the same time a horrible gray ooze traveled along the tangle of pipes and spat itself out into the waiting bottles.

In the audience, the grannies moaned, yelled, and bit one another, uncertain what to do next. The machine had finished with Elsie Bucket and was now vibrating dangerously, trying to tear free of the stage. A few yards away, Joe found a fire exit and, taking a deep breath, reached for the handle. He felt the cold steel under his hand and pushed. Mercifully, the door was unlocked. He felt the handle give and the door open and then he was out, tumbling into the night air.

And at that precise moment, the Grannymatic Enzyme Extractor exploded. Joe felt a fist of hot air punch him in the back. He was thrown forward, somersaulting twice and landing in a bed of flowers. He tried to stand up, then winced and covered his head as bricks, tiles, windows, wigs, and false teeth showered down all around him. It seemed to go on forever, but at last everything was silent again, and slowly, painfully, he got up.

The Stilton International had been partially destroyed. There was nothing left of the Elsie Bucket Conference Room. Nor could he make out a single surviving granny. It was like pictures he had seen of the Second World War—jagged broken walls, thick smoke, fires burning in the wreckage. Already the fire department and ambulance service had been alerted. He could hear their sirens in the far distance.

And then somebody moved, limping painfully through the smoke, coughing and spluttering. Joe tried to run, but he had sprained his ankle and he could only wait there as the figure approached.

It was Granny.

Somehow Joe wasn't surprised that she had survived. But the explosion had not left her unharmed. She had lost a large clump of her hair and all her remaining teeth. Her arms and legs were covered in cuts and bruises and her twenty-seven-year-old coat hung off her in ribbons.

The two of them stood gazing at each other in the debris. At last Granny spoke.

“Are you all right, Jamie, my dear?”

“My name is Joe—and I'm not your dear!”

“Oh yes you are.” Granny's eyes flickered over to what had been the Elsie Bucket Suite. “We're very lucky,” she said. “We seem to be the only survivors of an unfortunate accident …”