Jelly Cooper: Alien

BANG BANG BANG!

I wake violently, choking on fear.

“Come in.”

My voice is shaky. That’s just great. I prepare to be mad at whoever has the nerve to bang on my door like the local debt collector. The door swings open and my sister, Molly, walks into the room. I replace the frown with a smile. It feels all tight and strange on my face.

Molly is an unbelievable pest and would be a nightmare to live with if not for the fact that she is adorable. She loves me with a lack of reserve that only a kid can and, in return, I adore her and try to protect her from all the nastiness in the world. It’s our deal and it works for the both of us in our own way. It’ll probably change in the future, but then things do. Roll with the dice, change with the times and all that malarkey.

The unbelievable pest approaches the bed and I jump up and hoist her into the air, twirling us both around until she screams with laughter. Plonking her back on the floor, I chuckle as she sways drunkenly and topples forward into the duvet. Presently, Molly cocks her head to one side and appraises me with the full intensity of a six-year-old. It’s unnerving, so I try hard not to be unnerved.

“You look funny.”

“Thanks a lot”, I laugh, pouncing on Molly and tickling her tummy. Eventually, her squeals subside and I am once again faced with that honest scrutiny. I sigh. There’s no escape. I should have known better than to even try.

“OK, shoot.”

Molly frowns, then sucker punches me with “your eyes are broken and Humptey’s downstairs.”

“Humphrey,” I mumble out of habit.

Molly squints at me for a long time then nods her head, her bobbed hair swinging. “Yup, Humptey’s downstairs.”

Clearing my throat, I murmur, “um – do you think you could show him the way up here half-pint? You know what a scatterbrain he is.”

“Cool,” Molly grins and rushes off. She has a super-crush on Humphrey and thinks they’re going to get married when she’s ten.

I run a hand through my hair.

So now my eyes are broken? Well of course they are, because I’m going mad and my world is collapsing. I think I just experienced my first hallucination.

I should note that down in my diary; mark the date or something. The head-doctors will probably need to know stuff like that. When did it happen, where did it happen, what happened, exactly?

Just one problem: I don’t have a diary. I’ve never had a diary.

First thing tomorrow. I’ll go and buy a diary first thing tomorrow.

Before I have the chance to investigate, someone knocks softly on the door. It creaks open a couple of inches and Humphrey gingerly pokes his head into the room.

“Safe to come in?”

A ghost of a smile plays across my lips. Humphrey exercises extreme caution when entering my room. He once walked in on me fastening my bra and was too mortified to look at me for a whole week!

“Sure.”

“You look like hell.”

Once again ladies and gentlemen, the ever tactful Humphrey Goddard. I hit him with a pillow, to which he simply shrugs and grunts, “well, you do.”

With friends like this, yada yada yada…you know how it goes.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll go and tidy myself up.” I lay on the sarcasm, hoping it’ll offend him. It doesn’t.

“Good idea,” he manages to get out around another mouthful of pillow.

“Don’t make me flick your ear,” I say, all tetchy and wrong, and sit on the bed with my head in my hands.

When I was little, we used to have a strange decoration on our Christmas tree: a toy doll with a tiny body and a big plastic head. It was a little girl with brown hair and a cute, freckled face. The head and the body were connected by a retractable string and every time you gave the head a tug, as the string retracted the body, the girl would say something in a loud American accent. She had a couple of different sayings, like ‘I’ve lost my head over you!’ and, bizarrely, ‘there goes my mommeeeee’, but my favourite had always been: ‘I’m falling apart, tee hee!’

I always loved that doll.

“Humphrey, I think I’m falling apart.”

He sits beside me.

“Go and splash some water on your face and take a couple of deep breaths. You look like little orphan Annie and I can’t concentrate properly with you all fruzzy and spaced out.”

He smiles at me and gives me a quick hug.

I trudge to the bathroom, secretly grateful to Humphrey for making light of the catastrophe I’m becoming. I close the bathroom door and catch sight of myself in the mirror. There’s no doubt about it; I look like hell.

My hair is matted and unkempt from running against the wind and my pallor is deathly - even the dreaded freckles seem to have faded - and my eyes are wild. No wonder Molly thought that I look funny; I scare myself.

Recalling Molly’s weird observation about my eyes, I lean closer to the mirror and peer at my reflection. The ground falling clean away from beneath me, metaphorically speaking, is a complete surprise.

Molly’s right.

As completely and utterly impossible as it seems, my eyes are broken. Worse than broken, they’re orange.

Really.

There are orange lines spanning outwards from the pupil black depths of my green eyes. It makes them look like they’re on fire. Really on fire!

Just to clarify, I say again: there’s a wild, mad, fire. In my eyes! A wild mad fire that other people can see.

This isn’t Watership Down. This is sunny old Seabrook, where the weekly high point consists of the local Post Office getting its regular consignment of Walnut Whips. I am finished.

Groping behind me blindly, I plonk down on the edge of the bathtub, my legs shaking. Taking a couple of deep breaths, I try to get a grip. Humphrey’s waiting for me. Humphrey’ll know what to do for sure. I splash water on my face, try to drag a brush through the tangled mess parading as my hair, will my eyes to behave and go to face what I hope is going to be my light at the end of a very long and very weird tunnel.

“Hi Jay.”

Except that Humphrey’s not alone. Agatha has now joined him on the bed. Very, very, clever, perceptive Agatha. My step falters.

Humphrey I’ve known all my life. We shared a coat hanger at primary, not to mention a desk, some felt tips and our lunches. Humphrey, being one of the “big kids” for a short period of his life, protected me on the first day of primary school. Some kids were having a great time pointing out how “Jelly” rhymed with “smelly” and Humphrey stopped them. I’ve been trying to return the favour ever since. We’ve been each other’s sidekicks and lifelines for over a decade. This could account for the freakish closeness of our relationship and the easy way in which we trade insults.

Agatha, on the other hand, was a complete shocker – right out of left field. Humphrey aside, I have never felt friendly towards another being outside of my family until I met Agatha last year when she moved here.

I can clearly remember the first time I saw her. It was a Tuesday morning, her first at Seabrook. She was pinned to the southern wall of the gymnasium by none other than Rhiannon Miles. Melissa and Trishia were busy emptying the contents of Agatha’s bag onto the floor. Lord knows how many people had walked past and witnessed them tormenting her, but no one had tried to put a stop to it. Not one single person. Like I said earlier, golden girl of the year can’t put a foot wrong.

Agatha watched them impassively, her arms crossed over her chest, her chin jutting out - the picture of defiance. Even with her thick black hair in chunky plaits and her specs sat crookedly on the bridge of her nose, she looked so dignified as the hyenas laughed at their own cruelty that I just couldn’t help myself; I started running.

I charged at Melissa and Trishia, cannoning into them and sending them sprawling on the floor. Agatha saw her chance and took it - she shoved Rhiannon with all her might. The blonde witch landed on top of her two evil mates in a tangle of limbs and Agatha burst out laughing. She laughed as I pulled her away and laughed as I dragged her to the relative safety of ‘inside’, where she wiped her eyes, got her breath under control and said ‘what a bunch of dickheads’. We became firm friends at once.

Agatha and Humphrey know me possibly better than I know myself and lying to them is not, nor has ever been, an option. I might not tell them everything, but I won’t lie to them.

“Um...hi..guys,” I stammer.

Agatha and Humphrey stare at me, perplexed. I never stammer. Ever.

“Everything is wrong!” I say dramatically.

Agatha smiles crookedly, her thick-framed specs wobbling. Startling violent eyes gaze at me from behind the lenses. Agatha, whilst no doormat, and don’t ever get her cross, is constantly amazed at my sheer lack of self-restraint. There’s that and the fact that she’s a brilliant student who secretly adores school and simply cannot understand why I don’t feel the same. Seriously, she gets cravings for homework about two weeks into the summer holidays! Can you imagine?

Not that I hold it against her; we’re all different, and this I fully accept. Plus I love the way Agatha tries to hide her enthusiasm from me because she’s, um – how shall I say - sensitive to my feeling of intense mistrust towards the whole educational establishment.

“So, come on, tell us why everything’s wrong,” she says.

I falter.

Why am I so damned uncomfortable? When you find yourself in a desperate situation – eyes that are on fire. I’d call that desperate - you turn to your friends. You share your troubles. You invite them into your confidence. Or, if your name is Jelly Cooper and you’re socially incompetent, you push it all to the back of your mind and turn to your other close friend: denial.

Given the choice between telling Humphrey and Agatha that there’s something very, very wrong with me and telling them about some stupid dreams…

Stupid dreams it is then.

“So what happened this afternoon? Where did you go?” Agatha asks, eyes twinkling.

“I came home. That thing with Jason Stevens freaked me out.”

Agatha frowns. She’s sharp as a tack and you really have to watch what you say around her. Something I seem to have forgotten.

“What do you mean ‘that thing with Jason Stevens’? He fell over a bag, didn’t he?”

She glances at Humphrey, who nods and mumbles, “that’s what I heard.”

Backed into a corner, I do what I swore a long time ago not to do: I lie.

“Erm, yeah. But I was really close and I saw him go down and it, erm, made me feel sick?”

Humphrey sighs in typical Humphrey style. “Liar. What’s wrong?”

Scary-astute friends. I have two scary-astute friends.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry and I certainly don’t know how much of my fractured sanity I should reveal. I’m not ready for the straightjacket just yet.

“OK, it was nothing to do with Jason Stevens. I’m having a reoccurring nightmare. A really, really, nasty reoccurring nightmare, over and over again and it’s driving me nuts.”

“Are you sure it’s the same dream?” Agatha asks, sees the look on my face and retracts. “Of course you’re sure.” She frowns at me and I just know that she’s paying close attention to my pale skin and tired eyes. “How often?”

See what I mean?

“Every night. At first it was every now and again but recently, every bloody night.”

Humphrey slowly raises his eyebrows. My intention is to smile. It doesn’t quite make it.

Agatha jumps off the bed and forces me to sit down in her place. “You should tell us everything.”

I do as she says. Agatha’s smart. It pays to listen to her.

“It starts in total blackness.”

“Naturally,” Humphrey drawls, earning him a punch on the arm. Honestly, he’s his own worse enemy.

“Then slowly,” I continue, “the gloom lifts and I can see trillions of stars. One of the stars is getting bigger and I soon realize that it’s a planet. Suddenly, I’m in its atmosphere and I drop down through the clouds and land on top of a hill. The sky is like a butterscotch yellow and the ground is purple.”

“Purple.”

Humphrey has the word ‘sceptic’ written all over him. I sigh and try really hard to be patient.

“Yes, Humphrey. Purple.”

Agatha pokes her tongue out at Humphrey and tells me to ignore him, an order I gladly comply with. Ignoring Humphrey winds him up. Winding him up is fun.

“I can see a river and some trees. They’re the same as here,” I say as Humphrey opens his mouth to impart some sarky remark. “Generally, I’m just standing around having a nose, a bit like a tourist, and then it all changes.”

My stomach flips and I have to pause.

“The um, the hairs at the back of my neck start to stand on end, and I um…I start to, um…feel sort of…scared.”

There, I said it. It’s no biggie; people get scared, it happens. It doesn’t mean that I’m a wuss or anything like that. Clearing my throat, I go on.

“Then, a strange voice whispers in my ear. It says, ‘he’s coming - run’ and my legs develop a will of their own. I’m suddenly running flat out down the hill and I can’t stop. The voice in my head starts to sound scared and this terrifies me, um, in the dream of course. It gets louder and the sound of it is ringing in my ears.”

I stop and look at my friends.

“Does this sound insane?”

They shake their heads in unison, so I carry on, feeling a little better. “The voice in my head shouts ‘run, Kamile. He’s coming for you’, and right then, I know that someone really is after me, that he’ll stop at nothing to get me. He’s always been looking for me, since the day I was born.” I groan out loud. “This is so stupid.”

Humphrey grunts at me. “Jay, we already know you’re deranged, this latest twist doesn’t really make much of a blip on the “weird” radar.”

Despite his flippant comments, I know that Humphrey is hanging on my every word just in case his input can help me in any way. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Humph and I know he feels the same about me.

“Anyway, I’m running faster than I ever thought I could, which is strange. I thought that it was standard form in nightmares to be paralysed with fear, you know, standing in quick drying cement as the bad guy steadily creeps towards you? Not me though, I’m running like an athlete. Another weird thing; everything looks familiar, which is just impossible.” I shrug. “So, I’m running and I come skidding to a halt at the edge of this massive canyon. I’m struggling to catch my breath when I hear a different voice right behind me.”

I close my eyes, shuddering as a vivid recollection flashes before my eyes. My voice, when I speak again, is gruff.

“I freeze. My whole body freezes and the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand to attention all at once. I don’t turn around, I don’t need to. I already know that it’s him.”

“Who?” Agatha and Humphrey ask in unison.

“The Hunter,” I answer, my voice now no louder than a whisper.

Agatha shivers and mumbles, “I don’t like where this is going.”

I ignore her, unable to stop the words spilling from my mouth. I’ve kept the dream to myself for so long, finally talking about it is like opening the floodgates and letting the water out in one long stream: unstoppable.

“He’s right behind me. He grabs me by the shoulders and whispers in my ear ‘Kamile, I have been waiting for you to return.’ I try to turn around, to look at his face, but he’s too strong. Then he starts to laugh and I get really angry and struggle harder.”

I stare out of my bedroom window, lost in the dark clutches of the nightmare.

“And?” asks Humphrey.

I find that I can’t go on immediately. I struggle to swallow the lump in my throat. I hate to cry and never do, but I’ve had almost no sleep in four days. That’s going to catch up with a girl, you know?

“Jay?”

The concern in Humphrey’s voice can’t be ignored. I take the plunge.

“So, he erm, grabs me by the ankles…um..tips me upside down and dangles me over the canyon.”

The words come out in a rushed husky whisper. The air scratches against my throat. I purposely avoid looking at my friends.

“Nice guy,” comments Humphrey, doing his best to ignore my distress. Bless.

I shake my head, more than once.

“No. No he’s not. He shakes me once, hard. Then he says in the most evil, creepy voice I’ve ever heard, “I have waited long enough. Time to die, little one, time to die.””

I swallow, my eyes finding their way back to Humphrey.

“He drops me. He drops me head first into the canyon. I die, then I wake up.”

I stop and swallow. That took more out of me than I thought it would.

“That’s it?” Asks Agatha with wide eyes. “That’s the whole dream?”

“YES THAT’S THE WHOLE DREAM!”

She flinches and some part of me regrets shouting at her. But I really am teetering on the edge of crazy and crazy comes complete with erratic behaviour.

“Sorry.”

Agatha, though, won’t let it go.

“Is that the whole dream?”

I look around the room from object to object, landing on anything except a pair of violet eyes that have a habit of reading too much into things. You see, here comes the really wiggy part; the part that scared the living daylights out of me just when I thought I couldn’t be any more scared than I already was.

“H drops me, I wake up.”

“So you said.”

Sometimes, Humphrey comes this close (holding thumb and forefinger millimetres apart), I swear.

“Yes, thank you Humphrey,” I mutter. “Oh well, you’ve heard the rest of it, you may as well hear the freaky bit into the bargain.”

Ignore the fire, ignore the fire.

“Like that wasn’t freaky enough.”

“Humphrey, I’m warning you…”

“Sorry.”

I puff out my cheeks and take a minute to gather my thoughts. Here goes…

“I’m lying in bed, not quite sure if I’m alive or dead, wondering what just happened to me. Just when wake up properly and realise that I’ve had a dream about him, the Hunter, I hear his voice. Inside my head.”

Blank faces.

“While I’m awake,” I stress. “He says, ‘I’m coming for you Kamile. I’m closer every day.’” I throw my hands in the air. “It’s a freaking nightmare!”

Agatha taps her bottom lip for a while as she steals sneaky glances at my face. It’s annoying, but I let her carry on. She’s obviously cooking something up in that enormous brain of hers.

She stops tapping and says,

“We may need to go through this whole thing again. At first I thought that Rhiannon was finally getting to you and you were going a bit loopy because of it.”

“HAH!”

I know that I shouldn’t interrupt, but come on! We’re talking about me having a seriously deranged reoccurring nightmare and surreal panic attacks as a result of some teasing by a pompom-waver with the IQ of a wicker basket! I think not.

Agatha waves her hand. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Anyway, I don’t think Rhiannon has anything to do with your dream. It doesn’t feel right.”

Humphrey’s head comes up at this point. “Sounds right to me.”

“Well,” Agatha twiddles the ends of her hair. “The maniac in Jelly’s dream wants to kill her, I mean really wants to kill her. Rhiannon and the mini-me-minions are usually just talk, they hardly ever do hands on. The threat of a couple of girls, and I use the term loosely, saying nasty things and waving their fingers about doesn’t add up to what Jelly experiences in her nightmare. Right?”

She looks at me and I nod, once.

“It’s weird,” I say after a while. “It all feels so familiar to me. Him especially. I get déjà vu every time I think of him.”

Agatha pounces on this. “What does he look like? Describe him. Maybe he’s someone you’ve met and clashed with or something.”

I shake my head. “That’s the other strange thing. When I wake up, I can’t remember what he looks like, although in the dream, I’m sure that I know him. When I wake, all I can remember is a presence, like an evil force, or a black shadow.” I frown, once again hating my inability to remember.

Agatha chews the end of her plait and Humphrey gently tugs at her hand to stop her. She grins at him and I roll my eyes as they share a secret smile. When will they get their act together and actually get together?

“Guys, I am still here you know.”

At least they have the good grace to look uncomfortable.

“Why did you call him that, by the way?” Humphrey asks.

“Huh?”

“You just called him the Hunter. You said it like we’d know what it meant.”

I open my mouth to explain.

Oh shit.

“Because that’s what he is,” I croak. “He’s some kind of hunter and I’m the thing he’s hunting.”

I know it’s true. I say the words and feel it.

Oh God, there’s a very evil thing out there and it’s after me. Oh God.

“Um, Jel, that’s kind of insane,” Humphrey says.

“DON’T USE THAT WORD!” I shout, scaring us all. I take a breath and push it out. “I know how it sounds, but don’t say that, Humph. I’m not mad. I don’t want to be mad. OK?”

Humphrey rubs his hands on the knees of his jeans.

“OK, OK. Sorry.”

He touches the back of my hand with his little finger. “You’re not mad. Well, you are a bit mad, but not, like cuckoo mad, you know?”

I glare at him and he covers his ears with his hands.

“I know, I know, don’t make me flick your ears.”

“What about telling your parents?” Agatha asks quietly.

I stare at her. “Are you out of your mind? Nuh-uh, no way and neither of you will breathe a word, understand? I am not involving them in this. They would have a fit if I told them that I was having a reoccurring nightmare about other worlds and some strange nutcase, I mean bad person, chasing me half way across the galaxy to kill me. They’d probably think I was…um…having a breakdown and, and they’d be WRONG and then there’d be tears and worrying and…and…tears. They don’t need to know anything about it. So in answer to your question, ‘yes’ I have considered telling my parents, and ‘no’ that’s not going to happen.”

I pause for a much-needed breath. Agatha and Humphrey stare at me as if I’ve grown another head.

“Jelly?” Humphrey’s spooked. I can see it in his eyes.

Hope they can’t see the fire in mine.

“What?” I snap. My self-control is up and down like the line on a heart monitor and there doesn’t seem to be much that I can do about it.

“Do you want to explain what just happened?”

“Not particularly, no.”

I know that my face has taken on an unflattering mulish look, but again, I can’t seem to help it. OK, so my reaction may have been a teeny tiny bit over the top. Doesn’t mean that I have to explain myself to anyone, does it?

Does it?

“I can’t tell my parents.”

“Why not?” Humphrey asks.

I groan out loud. “This really does make me sound crazy. Oh, alright! I can’t tell my parents because…um, it would…um, put them in danger.”

I turn away so that I don’t have to see the looks on their faces.

“That’s a little bit worrying, Jay.”

I really must change my wallpaper. The pattern’s a bit too girly-swirly for my liking. I think I’ll go buy some new stuff this weekend. Or maybe some paint.

Agatha’s fingers brush the back of my hand.

Yes, that wallpaper really has to go.

She squeezes my hand and I turn around.

“You’re trying to shield your parents from him. Not shield them from worrying about your sleepless nights and bad dreams, but from him physically. That means that you think that the thing in your dreams…”

“- the Hunter.”

“The Hunter in your dreams is an actual threat and real.”

Humphrey grunts. I ignore him and focus on Agatha, the helpful friend.

“Every night when I wake from the dream,” I admit, “I would swear that he’s real.”

Humph looks up at me. Shaking his head, he solemnly declares, “not good, Jel. Not good.”

“Yeah, thanks Humphrey. I did manage to figure that much out all by myself.”

Agatha can see that my nerves are jingle-jangling. “Maybe we should leave it for tonight. We can talk more tomorrow.” She pulls Humphrey to his feet and pushes him towards the door. “Maybe you’ll get a good night’s sleep now that you’ve got it off your chest.”

Yeah, right.

“One more thing,” Agatha turns at the door. “When you were calmly explaining why you couldn’t involve your parents in this whole thing –

That’s as close to sarcasm as Agatha gets.

– you said something odd.”

“Odd?”

Agatha nods. “Yeah. You said that you couldn’t tell your parents that some nutcase had chased you half way across the galaxy, or something like that.”

I flinch at the word nutcase.

“And?”

“Well, it’s just that, in your dream, you’re on a planet where this hunter has been waiting for you to go back so that he can kill you.”

Am I the only one not getting this?

“And…?”

“In your dream, he’s been waiting for you - you’ve gone to him. In your dream.” Agatha falters. “But earlier, you said that he’d followed you half way across the galaxy to kill you. That’s what you think when you’re awake, that he’s followed you here.”

What did I tell you? Scary-astute.

Because that’s exactly what I think.