Still, he refused to go back into the house without having made some progress, so he tightened his grip on the handle, dug his toes into the soft ground, and pushed on until he was swallowed by the overgrown undergrowth.
His arms and shoulders quickly began to ache from the strain. Tiny insects with enormous appetites dive-bombed him, tormenting him with their teeth. Clenching his jaw, he heaved the lawn mower another half-metre up the garden, briefly pushing over yet another patch of head-high grass.
And then, without warning, the weeds parted and Drake and the lawn mower emerged into a neatly kept clearing. The grass beneath his feet was a deep, lush green – not the wishy-washy grey of the other stuff – and just a centimetre or so long. It looked like a putting green at a golf course, cut into a pattern of perfect straight lines.
A raised flower bed stood off to one side of the circular space, sprouting with all the colours of the rainbow. A single bee bumbled lazily from flower to flower, happily checking for pollen, and appearing not in the least bit bothered when it found none. Nearby, birds sang songs of joy and harmony to one another, and to anyone else who cared to listen.
But Drake noticed none of these things. Instead, what he noticed was the shed.
It stood in the centre of the clearing. Or perhaps slouched would have been a more appropriate word, considering its condition.
The shed was about two metres wide by three long, with a door taking up most of one of the narrow ends. The walls were a smooth, dark timber that appeared to be immune to the early morning sunlight. Shadows hung over the planks like camouflage netting. Contrasting with the cheerful brightness of the clearing, though, the effect was exactly the opposite of camouflage: the shed stood out like a big square sore thumb. With a little red roof.
A cool breeze blew at Drake’s back as he stepped away from the lawn mower and further into the clearing. Turning, he looked back at the house. He had an unobstructed view of his bedroom window from here, which meant he should’ve been able to see this place from up there too.
And yet, he hadn’t. He hadn’t noticed the neatly cropped circle. He hadn’t spotted the shed. All he’d seen was grass and weeds and hours of thankless hard work.
“There’s an explanation,” he told himself quietly. “No idea what it is, but there’s an explanation. There’s always an explanation.”
Drake believed most things could be explained. He knew ghosts were tricks of the light, and UFOs were usually helicopters, or balloons, or far too much alcohol. He knew there was an explanation for this too. And he knew where he’d find it.
He hadn’t noticed the birds tweeting or the bees buzzing, so Drake didn’t notice both fall silent as he approached the shed door. Nor did he hear the breeze hold its breath, or see the flower heads twist slowly in his direction as he turned the handle, eased the door open, and quietly stepped inside.
DRAKE STOOD IN the doorway, still gripping the handle, a scream trapped in a bubble at the back of his throat. He had expected the shed to be empty.
He had, as it transpired, been wrong.
A monstrous figure of a man sat on a folding deckchair directly in front of Drake, his broad, muscular frame making the chair look ridiculously small by comparison. Even sitting down, the man was a clear two feet taller than Drake, with a wild, flame-red beard that covered the bottom half of his face and reached almost all the way down to the floor.
His hair was the same colour as his beard, thinning on top, but long at the back and sides. It hung down over his bronzed shoulders, finally stopping around halfway down his back.
A scar ran from the top of his forehead to his cheek, passing through a milky white eye along the way. In one enormous fist he clutched a small red cylinder. It rattled noisily as he shook it back and forth. The clatter seemed deafening in the otherwise soundless shed.
There was a telephone mounted on the wall behind the man, thick with dust. It was an old-fashioned-looking thing, the type that had a dial instead of buttons. Only this phone didn’t even have the dial part. It looked like a phone designed solely for receiving calls, and not making them.
The man didn’t look up when Drake entered, just kept rattling the container in his hand, his eyes fixed on the table before him.
It was only as Drake spotted the table that he noticed the other men sitting round it. Afterwards, he would ask himself how he could possibly have missed them. Or one of them, at least.
The... thing sitting across from the first man appeared, at best, vaguely human. Or rather, he looked exactly like a small group of humans would look, were they blended together into a puree, then fed to another particularly hungry human.
Rolls of flab hung off him like tinsel from a Christmas tree. They drooped from his chins and from his neck. They hung down over the elasticated waistband of his grey jogging trousers. They bulged beneath his matching grey top and spilled out through splits in the reinforced seams.
The whole gelatinous mound of blubber wobbled as the man turned to look at the new arrival. He looked Drake up and down, then crammed an entire chocolate bar into his cavernous mouth. Sideways.
There was a wet smacking sound as the fat man’s purple tongue licked hungrily across his lips, and then he spoke. “You must be the new fella,” he said, in a voice like a turkey’s gobble. “Thought you’d be taller.”
“And I bet he thought you’d be less revolting,” snapped the third figure, whom Drake hadn’t even looked at thus far. He turned to look at him now, and was relieved to discover he appeared almost completely normal, aside from the white paper mask he wore over his nose and mouth, and the latex rubber gloves on each hand.
Reaching into the top pocket of his pristine white coat, the third man pulled out a pair of glasses. His eyes seemed to double in size as he positioned the spectacles on his nose. “Oooh, he’s right, though,” the man said, looking Drake up and down. “You are a shorty. Still, you know what they say. Size isn’t everything!” The man snorted out a laugh. “No, but seriously. Don’t worry about it, it’s fine. Fine. You’re perfect just as you are. Gorgeous.”
“You sitting down then?” asked the human blancmange. He was munching on another chocolate bar, not even bothering to remove the wrapper first.
Drake’s gaze shifted across each of the men in turn. The only sound in the shed was the slow, rhythmic rattling of the container in the bearded man’s hand.
“Um... um...” Drake stammered. “Sit... sit down?” “Well, you might as well!” chirped the third man, removing his glasses and slipping them back in his pocket. “I mean, let’s face it, you are going to be stuck here for ever, after all!”
The door gave a loud thud as it swung closed. The three occupants of the shed listened to the boy’s screams as he raced from the clearing and back towards the house.
“Oh dear,” said the third man. “Was it something I said, d’you think?”
It was the man in the deckchair’s turn to speak. He spoke with a broad Scottish brogue, his voice louder than the others’, despite the muffling effect of his beard. “Oh, don’t you worry. He’ll be back.”
“You sure?”
“Aye. I’m sure.”
Without another word, he opened his hand, letting a small square object tumble on to the tabletop. All three men peered down at the markings etched on to the object’s