CHAPTER 14
Zac walked to the side of the door, and then behind it, and then he gasped with sudden shock and terror.
When he was behind the door, he didn’t see it.
Quickly, he circled back to the front, and the door was there! He ran to its back, and it was not there. Still standing at the back, he tried to extend his hand to see if his hand would touch it, but as soon as he stretched his left hand there was a high-pitched wailing sound, and the ground began to tremble.
“Stop that, Zac,” Aunt Naomi screamed.
Zac circled to the front, and the door was there.
He felt dizzy all of a sudden.
He knew something was seriously wrong now. All the others were to the front of the golden door, and none of them had dared go around it as he had.
Quickly, he moved away backwards from the door, searching frantically for Araba and Bobo.
As if they had heard him, they suddenly appeared in the front row of the group and walked up to him.
“Did you do this, Zacky?” Bobo asked, excited. “Are we going inside? Where does it lead to? Is there some wonderland beyond?”
“I really doubt it, BB,” Zac said, striving to keep his fear out of his voice.
“I’m scared, Zac,” Araba said and shuddered.
“I know,” Zac replied. “I don’t know where this door came from. Please, whatever happens, stay close to me, okay, both of you?”
And that was precisely when the golden door flew open.
Fire blazed from within the door, causing many of the onlookers to scream with fear. Many would have fled, judging by their sudden body movements. Bobo, for one, would have moved with the speed of light, but he found to his chagrin, just like many others, that suddenly he could not move.
There was a sudden and absolutely miserable moment when everyone present, apart from Zac, started screaming or shouting at once.
It was a most agonizing moment for Zac as he watched all of them struggling to move, and finding out that their feet suddenly felt glued to the ground.
They could move their bodies but they could not lift their legs off the ground.
“Zac!” Araba screamed, her face filled with a terrible panic. “Help me!”
“Zacky, Zacky, I can’t move!” Bobo, overcome with terror, was screaming.
But Zac could move. He moved close and put an arm across the shoulders of his friends.
“Please, be calm. It’s going to be alright,” he said, striving to control his fear and remain calm himself.
The truth was that Zac was far from calm, and he certainly was not feeling alright. What he was seeing really filled him with fear. He could see a man-like figure emerging from the door, which still had a mighty fire raging from it and billowing outward, and through the flames, Zac could hear voices screaming in there.
The man stepped out, and the door swung shut behind him.
He stood still, and little sparks of flame fell off him, and tendrils of smoke slowly curled off his body. He stood in the bright moonlight, and the sight of him momentarily shut every screaming voice down.
There was some kind of horror that was so bad that screaming was not needed.
He was a little man in a shimmering material and was completely bald. His eyes were two vertical slits that had fire burning in them. His fingers wriggled like snakes, and as he shook little drops of flames fell from his fingertips.
He stood still and regarded the petrified faces with a terrifying stare, and his face searched the people frantically.
Suddenly his head shot to one side as if he was listening to some sound only he could hear, and then he lifted his right hand straight and pulled downward as if he was yanking on a rope.
There was a terrible scream from far away, and very soon they heard the scream in the air and they all looked up. It was Mistress Ohenewaa, and she was being dragged through the air as if she were a kite.
She thudded into the ground in front of the strange man, who looked at her with a furious expression. She made choking noises in her throat and got to her feet. She tried to flee but found out, like the rest of them, that her feet just couldn’t move off the ground.
“Welcome, you vile little thing,” the man said, and Zac gasped because his voice sounded like many people shouting into a vacuum.
The silence was eerie; it seemed as if no one was even breathing. What was happening seemed like a nightmare. They could just not accept it as reality because to do so would be to risk madness.
The strange man-thing turned his head slowly, and then his flame-eyes settled on Zac for the first time, and something incredible happened; maybe his eyes would have opened wide with shock if he had had human eyes, but he did not have human eyes, and so the flames in his eyes leapt suddenly and seemed to blaze furiously.
“You Leaper!” he said, and his voice sounded craggy this time, like that of a very old man, and when he raised his hand Zac saw that his fingers were many, and ended in round globe-like stumps. “What’re you doing here? You should be immobile in your bed.”
The thing trembled, and the fire in his eyes turned to a terrible blue hue, and deep down Zac knew that the strange thing was furious. Bobo was squeezing Zac so tightly that he could barely breathe, and he saw that Araba was close to fainting.
“BB, relax!” Zac said, but this time he could not totally keep his own fear out of his voice, and so his voice trembled. Bobo was sweating so much that it poured down Zac’s neck as if a little tap had been turned on around his neck.
“What is that?” Bobo asked, and his voice had become tiny indeed. “That man is not a human!”
“It’s a demon!” Araba wept. “It’s going to kill us all!”
“Hush!” Zac reassured them. “I will not allow it to harm us!”
The terrible man moved forward until he was just a few paces from Zac and peered closely at Zac.
Quite suddenly, there were quick movements under the shimmering material he was wearing as his body bulged and contracted, changing shapes as if there were many different things under his clothing.
And as if that was not enough, his eyes changed rapidly in colour, shape and size; from red to pink to yellow to white…colours, colours, terrible colours! Some had pupils, some didn’t, some were solid, and some were hazy. Some were horizontal, others vertical, others diagonal, others simply round!
Araba shut her eyes tightly and whimpered.
Bobo groaned and fought hard to extricate himself from Zac’s embrace, but Zac held on tightly to his friends.
“I’m Mr. Happy!” the bald-headed man said, and Zac noticed then that he had no hair on his face. “And your body is mine, Leaper! I’m going to live in your body!”
His last sentence was uttered in the voice of many people, or things, or whatever it was that lived in him…and it resonated so loudly that it hurt the ears of the scared people listening to him.
“No!” Zac said in a whisper. “I can’t imagine you living in my body, Mr. Happiness!”
The man’s flame eyes flared again, so violently that tendrils of smoke flitted out of his nose and the corners of his eyes.
“Mr. Happy, you vile idiot!” it corrected in its thousands of voices. “And you are mine, Leaper!”
He slashed his hand through the air, and Bobo went flying backwards, wrenched forcibly out of Zac’s arms. Araba screamed and held on tightly, but when Mr. Happy slashed his hand again she went flying off as if torn by a powerful gale.
Mr. Happy reached out, and white tentacles shot out of his body, like some freak octopus, and grabbed Zac. He felt things moving all over his body, entering him, entering his head.
It dawned on him that as impossible as it seemed, the thing called Mr. Happy was indeed trying to enter his body.
“No!” Zac screamed, with fear and anger, and flung out his arms fiercely in protest.
He was aware that suddenly his voice sounded as loud and as powerful as Mr. Happy’s had sounded, and when he threw out his hands, Mr. Happy was lifted off his feet, hurled through the air, and slammed down hard on the lawn.
The earth cracked where he fell, and the ground gave beneath him, and he entered into the hole created by the weight of his body.
“Wooow!” Zac whispered, scared but strangely impressed with himself.
Mr. Happy could not be seen now, and Zac wondered if he had gotten rid of the scary man, but just then flames leapt out of the little hole Mr. Happy was in the hole, and a moment later he soared out of the hole and gently landed on his feet.
But he was no longer human!
His false human body was gone, and he stood as he really was! A monster!
While there was no hair on his face, his terrible body was covered with a lot of rainbow hair. There were red, pink, yellow, purple, orange, black, white and a host of coloured hair all over him. He had three very thick legs that had about six joints that made his legs appear to be arranged like zig-zagged lines. His arms were huge and so long that they were folded spherically from his shoulders like the way water hoses were folded.
There was a gigantic horn in the middle of his head now, and its tip seemed to be an eye. He had a thick tail covered with a spiral stump, and it expanded and reduced repeatedly.
His eyes were now piercing diamond-like orbs that glittered with angry intensity. His fingers were many and ended in round stumps that now glowed with many colours, and it seemed like millions of tiny fireworks were going on around his fingertips.
He pointed a red-tipped finger at Kweku Obi.
“YOU!” he said in a booming voice that shook the ground and caused the onlookers to moan with fear. “You’re the cause of this! I told you exactly midnight!”
“That’s what I did!” Kweku screamed with great fear. “I did exactly that!”
“LIARRRR!” Mr. Happy shouted in a terrible angry voice that sounded like thousands of women shrieking, and this time fire spewed out of his mouth in a great explosion.
Suddenly, before Zac could move, Mr. Happy’s hands began to unwind.
His right hand streaked backwards and threw open his golden door. He lashed out with his right hand, broadening as it shot at the people. It was a very long tentacle that soon bulged like an anaconda. It went round in an arc and encircled all the children and the companions and Mistress Ohenewaa, holding them fiercely in an unbreakable hoop, and then he swept them up and with the speed of lightning, threw them all into his golden door, which was still standing open and from within which fire burned and voices screamed.
“Nooooo!” Zac screamed with horror.
Araba and Bobo were screaming too.
