“You poor darling,” said his mother. “You must have been having a horrible nightmare when the explosion, or whatever it was, happened.”
“It wasn’t a nightmare. It was a real red-eyed monster. It put its great big hairy head through—”
“All right, old man, all right,” said his father. “You’d better have a shakedown in the living-room until morning. Tomorrow will be time enough to find out what caused the window to break. A freak storm of some sort maybe.”
Next morning, when his parents saw the chaotic state of the garden, with ravaged flowerbeds and uprooted bushes, they were even more convinced that a freak storm had hit the house. Peter’s tale of the monster was paid no attention at all. His mother insisted that he had been dreaming.
“I saw what I saw,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t have yelled like that just for a dream. I’m accustomed to bad dreams.”
He set off nervously to school, glancing from side to side. Halfway there, he stopped. He was behaving like a baby and a coward. The way to cope with fear was to fight it, not scream and tremble. He wouldn’t go to school today. He would go and find the creature who had visited him last night.
But how? And where to start?
He sniffed the air. He caught a faint whiff of that animal-metallic smell . . .
It was such a distinctive smell that, although it was faint as yet, he found that he could follow it. It was different from ordinary dog-smells, or unwashed-human-being-smells; different from the pong that came out of a restaurant’s back door, or the stench of a neglected and squalid dustbin; different from the hot-smell of the foundry and the rotting-vegetable smell of the open-air market. He followed it, sniffing as he went, through back streets and along alleys. He came out of the crowded, industrial area of the town into the near-countryside. And here the smell was stronger.
He walked along a lane that led to the woods. The last time he had come to this wood he’d been picnicking with friends, and they’d taken a bus to get this far. He’d walked miles without realising it because he was so intent on his purpose.
However, as he’d set out so early, he had all day to find whatever was to be found. He must be cautious, not to rush things.
Stepping softly-softly, he entered the deserted winter wood. Deserted? By lovers and picnickers, maybe—too cold for that—but the smell of the monster was strong. The place stank of it. And the trees, which once he had climbed so light-heartedly, seemed to tower over him like sinister sentinels. The monster, he recalled, would be as tall as most of the trees.
The smell grew stronger and stronger. He found himself examining the foot of the trunk of a tree—funny sort of tree-trunk—with claws—and hairy—
He let his gaze travel slowly up that “tree-trunk”, and was aware of two beams of red light shining down on him. Then, suddenly, he was seized round the waist by a giant hand and lifted high into the air. He struggled and squirmed in vain.
He was held, in that great hand, opposite the red eyes. The champing mouth was only a short distance away. The smell of the shaggy hair was almost overpowering.
“Put me down,” he said, in a tiny but brave voice.
The shaggy head shook vigorously, rushing and swishing like a leafy tree-top.
“What do you want?” Peter asked.
Another head-shake and a wave of smelly breeze.
“If you don’t know what you want, then—who are you?”
The monster bared its teeth and uttered a long “MEEEEEEE . . .”
“We’re air Me,” said Peter. “I’m Me too.”
The monster tried again: “MEEEEEEEEEE-TEEEEEE.”
“You Tea?” Did it want a cuppa? Peter gasped for breath. The creature was holding him so tightly round the waist that he feared he might pass out if this went on much longer.
“Oh, please put me down,” he said. “I’ve done you no harm. I’ll—I’ll even go and make you a cup of tea if you’ll put me down. It was me you visited last night. I know I screamed horribly but you gave me such a shock. Please!”
Then, to his vast relief, a human voice spoke from somewhere below. “Put the little boy down, Meaty.”
Peter found himself descending as rapidly as if he were in a lift and a second later he felt his feet touch the ground. He turned to the man who had commanded the monster and been instantly obeyed.
“He hasn’t hurt you, has he?” the other asked anxiously. “He’s completely harmless when he’s normal, but when he gets big like this, he destroys without meaning to. We’ll soon cut him down to size. Meaty?” he called up. “Close your eyes.”
The monster obeyed. The red lights went out. For a second the great creature stood immense and still, almost like a tree that has turned into some sort of animal, and then it began to shrink in size.
It became smaller, smaller, smaller, until it was no bigger than a baby. It was still exactly the same shape, and had the same funny smell—only it was a funny little smell now and therefore less repulsive. Indeed Peter realised that it was because the creature had been so big that it was frightening. It wasn’t vicious. Now, reduced to this tiny scale, it just looked like a hairy little bundle of monkey-type life.
The man brought a black bandage from his pocket and bound it over the creature’s eyes. “It’s when he opens his eyes that he grows,” he said. “I keep him blindfolded always, but last night he got away when I was asleep, took off his blindfold—and heaven knows what damage he may have done.”
“He’s made a rotten mess of our garden, broken my bedroom window, and scared the pants off me when he turned up in the dark,” said Peter, “but I think that’s all. My screams scared him and I guess he came into this wood and hid for the rest of the time. His camouflage is pretty good. He merges with the tall trees.”
The man was nursing the small, blindfolded monster in his arms and stroking it. “All right, Meaty, all right. Oh, but you were naughty.”
“Why do you call him Meaty?” asked Peter, for the creature looked far from edible.
“He came out of a meteorite, that’s why. But don’t let on to anyone. I should have reported it instead of keeping him.”
“I’m not sure what a meteorite is.”
“A lump of stony, metallic material which falls to earth from outer space. This particular meteorite was no bigger than the average dustbin and landed harmlessly in a field not far from my house, so I was first on the spot. It split open and this little creature fell out. His eyes were tightly closed and he looked so pathetic that I took him home before the police arrived to make notes and take the meteorite away. I breed monkeys, so I thought I’d be able to look after him properly. Include him in the family, as it were. For the first couple of weeks he just lay peacefully with his eyes closed, then when he opened them I had a shock. Not only the glare of red light, but the fact that he began to grow. I brought him back to small size by making him close his eyes and I’ve kept his eyes bandaged ever since—or tried to.”
The little monster was weeping now, red tears falling over his cheeks from under the black blindfold.
“I feel dreadfully cruel, keeping him ‘blind’,” said the man, “but aside from the fact that he grows when he opens his eyes, the eyes themselves have disruptive power. They make mechanical things go wrong.”
“You’re telling me!” said Peter. “He stopped ray clock, messed up the electric light and deaded my radio battery. Then the things came right again after he’d gone.”
“He’s completely unaware of it, of course. He’s not to blame in any way. He’s in the wrong world, poor little Meaty.”
“I expect he’d be all right on the moon,” said Peter. “He could grow as big as he liked.”
“How right you are, but they’ve stopped moon trips for the time being—”