With the trees now further apart, they made better time—until something came lumbering out of the jungle. Paul froze, mesmerised. His first thought was that it was a giant reptile straight out of prehistory; then he realized it could only be an iguana. But this particular iguana towered over them.
The giant lizard was scaly, with a crest of spines and a long tail. Its fore-claws waved the air menacingly as it regarded them with bright beady eyes. The snout of head darted at them.
“Run,” Dick snapped.
Paul turned and sprinted for the trees, brushing past thorny plants that tore at his shirt. The iguana could move fast, despite its bulk. Branches broke as the lizard pursued them, smashing a way through the jungle like a tank on legs.
Dick gasped out, “We’ll have to split up. It can only chase one of us—meet again at the river.”
He turned left and Paul right. Sweating, out of breath, Paul paused in flight, suddenly aware he could hear no sound of pursuit. The lizard must have followed Dick.
He leaned against a tree, alone in the forest, and realised night was coming on. Already the green twilight was darkening. He shouted Dick’s name a couple of times but there was no answer.
In the morning, he thought, he’d go on towards the river. As darkness closed in, he climbed a tree and lay in the fork made by the trunk and a stout branch.
With night came the cough of a jaguar and crashing noises as something fled through the jungle. He slept in short catnaps, disturbed by frightening noises, and was glad when morning came and the green light shone down through his roof of leaves.
He headed once more towards the river, keeping an eye open for any more of the monster creatures that might be around. The river couldn’t be much further, he hoped. He plodded on until there was a break in the foliage overhead; he glimpsed the sun and was able to correct his direction.
It was abnormally quiet in this part of the forest and he paused as he sniffed the air. Somewhere close by was an unpleasant smell. He moved on warily. Sunlight glistened on a shiny vine stretching across his path.
Dick’s voice came, weakly: “Back, Paul—go back.”
Paul obeyed automatically, but stopped after a few paces. Nothing moved among the trees. There was just the vine . . . no vines, and Dick. The pilot appeared to be suspended with his feet off the ground. Then Paul realised that the vines were something much more frightening—they were the threads of an enormous spider’s web stretched between the trees. Dick was trapped like a fly by the sticky strands.
The pilot gasped, “Stay clear, Paul—this stuff’s as strong as wire.”
The web hummed like a telegraph line, shimmering in the sun. Paul looked up and horror gripped him. A giant spider was climbing down the web towards Dick. It was something out of a nightmare, with hairy jointed legs.
On the ground, where the pilot had dropped them when he blundered into the web, were the machete and Very pistol. Paul ran forward and scooped up the knife. He swung it wildly against the sticky strands but the blade stuck to them. He sawed frantically and, after what seemed like minutes, one strand parted.
He glanced up as the web vibrated. The spider’s eyes stared back unblinkingly. Its legs moved slowly as it crept nearer. He would never cut Dick free before the thing reached him.
He dropped the machete and snatched up the Very pistol, aimed it carefully at the monster and squeezed the trigger. A bright red flare burst, showering the spider with sparks, and it scuttled back up the web.
Again Paul used the machete, hacking at the web until Dick was free.
“Thanks, Paul. Thank heavens you came this way.”
Together they went on until they reached the river. Then they took turns with the machete, cutting branches and lashing them together with lianas to make a raft.
They launched the raft into the fast-flowing current and scrambled aboard and the river bore them swiftly away, cut of the Valley of the Monsters.
Paul did not look back. He’d had enough excitement; never again would he be bored with school. Anything—even business studies—was better than being marooned in the jungle!
VISITOR IN THE NIGHT
By Rosemary Timperley
Peter wakened from an unremembered dream. He had no idea what had roused him. All was quiet but for the ticking of his alarm clock. Then suddenly its ticking stopped.
There was no reason why that should be upsetting, except that he knew he’d wound it the night before, yet it seemed to him, during this strange waking in the small hours, that whatever had roused him had also stopped the clock.
He sat up, reached out, and pressed the electric light switch near his bed. No light came. He switched off and on again. Still no light. He left the switch turned on.
Trying to suppress panic, he groped for his little transistor radio. He turned it on. No sound. He twiddled the knob. No, the radio was dead, yet he’d been playing it before he went to sleep and the battery was almost new.
He told himself that these were three minor coincidences, yet he had an eerie feeling that some external power was at work, obliterating the lesser powers, of clock, light, radio.
Peering into the darkness of his bedroom, he could see the familiar shapes of the furniture. Why could he see them so clearly? Where was this increasing light coming from? A red-tinted light.
He looked towards the window and saw that the red light was coming from outside, penetrating the thick winter curtains. It must be very strong, and it was growing stronger.
He wanted to leap out of bed and run to the door, but by now he was paralysed with fear, as in a nightmare. He tried to call out, but his throat had gone dry. All he could do was sit statue-still and stare at the glowing window. The room was bathed in deep red light.
The next thing he noticed was that the light which penetrated the curtains was most intense in two places, as if two small red suns were drawing closer and growing larger . . .
Suddenly there was a crash of glass, the curtains were thrust aside, and the two red “suns” revealed themselves as two blazing red eyes whose beams swept the room like searchlights.
The eyes were set in a massive, hairy head which filled the whole window-frame. Peter saw big, champing lips, and a strong smell, half-animal, half-metallic, filled the air.
As his room was right at the top of the house, level with the tree-tops, this creature with the red-eyed head must be giant tall. It had apparently walked up to the house and shoved its head through his window!
The boy’s fear-paralysis broke at last. He let out a louder scream than any he had screamed before. He kept it up too. He screamed and screamed and screamed . . .
The visitor at the window did not like the noise. The red “searchlights” swooped away as it turned its back. The window-space turned black with the back of its head, then it retreated, and the night sky appeared. At the same moment, the electric light came on again.
His door burst open and his father rushed in. “What’s happening? Oh, my God!” For the father saw his young son sitting up in bed, yelling his lungs out; the glass from the window lying in pieces on the floor; and the curtains all a-tatter and a-tangle.
“Peter, are you hurt? Did any of that glass cut you?”
Peter, voiceless now from lack of breath, shook his head.
His mother came in. “What can it be?” she exclaimed. “A gas explosion? A bomb?”
“No,” gasped Peter. “A great big hairy monster with red eyes. It stopped the clock, put out the light, made my radio go dead and put its head through the window.” Then he noticed that the clock was ticking again and when he turned on his radio, cheerful music burst forth from a foreign station.