Mindbenders

by Nicholas Fisk

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; YA Science Fiction

Synopsis

Vinny and Toby can make things happen just by using their minds. As Vinny stares at a box of ants, she feels as though she is plugging into a giant power socket. It is then that she hears a voice, letting her know that the ants plan to take over the Earth. Can Vinny stop it before it's too late?

Release date: November 28, 2019

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

Vinny said, ‘No, don’t, we mustn’t, it’s cruel, it’s mean.’

But her brother Toby saw the corners of her mouth twitch. ‘Ah, come on,’ he said. ‘Do old Bloggs good. Wake him up.’

They were upstairs looking out of the window and down on the garden. It was sunny, hot. Bloggs lay on his favourite paving stone, legs stretched, golden eyes narrowed to slits. Happy fat black cat.

‘Look at his bulging belly!’ Toby said. ‘Middle-age spread. He needs exercise. We’d be doing him a favour.’

‘He’s not middle-aged,’ Vinny said.

‘He is. You’re nine, he’s ten, I’m eleven. Bang in the middle.’

‘Ten’s not middle-aged for a cat,’ Vinny said. She stared worriedly at Bloggs. You multiply a cat’s age by seven, or is it five? Either way, she thought, I suppose Bloggs is getting middle-aged. How sad.

At that moment, Bloggs rolled over and lay on his back, with limp front paws dangling over his chest and his rear legs stretched out rigidly, like stilts. Even at this distance, you could see the smirk on his face. Vinny had to smile, then laugh.

‘Go on!’ Toby insisted.

‘Well …,’ she said. The frown came back to her face, but a different frown, a frown of intense concentration. Her dark eyes became black, her lower lip pouted. ‘Little brown mouse …,’ she murmured.

‘Terrific, that’s it, keep at it!’ Toby whispered.

‘Little brown mouse, little brown mouse!’ Vinny repeated.

And there it was: a little brown mouse, sleek and plump! It sat on its haunches almost in front of Bloggs’s nose. Its whiskers vibrated. It washed itself.

‘Great, terrific, brill, genius!’ Toby murmured.

At first, Bloggs saw nothing, He was too busy enjoying the sun. But then he rolled over, yawning – and glimpsed something small, brown, glossy and plump. A mouse! A mouth-watering, succulent mouse!

His sun-bathing position became a stalking crouch. His chin touched the warm paving stone. His shoulder-blades made two devilish humps, higher than his head. The tip of his tail twitched.

The mouse washed behind its ears with paws that moved as fast as an electric buzzer.

Bloggs crawled forward on his belly, a centimetre at a time.

The mouse kept washing itself.

Vinny bit her lip and stared, fascinated.

Bloggs was within springing distance.

Toby rubbed his hands and stared, wide-eyed.

Bloggs bunched his muscles. He had only to spring, claws spread, hooked teeth ready to crunch shut—

‘Cancel!’ Vinny shouted

And suddenly, there was no mouse.

Instantly, Bloggs changed from mighty hunter to puzzled pussycat. He sniffed at the place where the mouse had been. He even patted the place with his paw. He raised his head and gave a complaining ‘Miaow!’ No mouse.

‘Oh!’ cried Vinny, melodramatically, ‘Oh, how mean! How rotten we are! How awful! Oh, poor Bloggs!’

‘Don’t drivel,’ Toby said. ‘It was a fantastic success. You’re getting better every day.’

‘That’s true,’ Vinny said, forgetting the dramatics. ‘I am getting good. Of course, you helped. I can’t do it alone.’

‘I don’t think I help all that much. I mean, I concentrate like mad and try and make rays of thought come out of my eyes and all that. But it’s still you.’

‘Me and you – and the ants,’ Vinny said, slowly. ‘Don’t ever forget the ants. They changed everything.’

‘If you’re going to get all mystical,’ Toby began.

‘But it is all mystical!’ Vinny said. ‘That was a Mystical Mouse!’

Toby did not answer. He bit his lip for a little while, then said, ‘You say things have changed. When? How? What?’

They were in the bedroom they used to share when they were little. Now it was Toby’s room and a mess. To find a place to sit down, Vinny had to push things aside with her foot – bicycle chainwheels, magazines, a busted computer, DM boots, pyjamas. ‘You really are a filthy pig,’ she said, but her heart wasn’t in the remark. Like Toby, she was thinking deeply about the Mystical Mouse and other amazing things. Unexplainable things.

They sat thinking. ‘Absolutely filthy,’ Vinny said vaguely. Then – ‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ she said. ‘Let’s find out what we are and who we are and what we’re doing.’

‘Frodsham’s Fun Book,’ Toby said. ‘That was where it began. “Why is a race horse like an ice-cream? Because the more you lick it, the faster it goes.” ’

‘Ha, ha,’ Vinny said, hollowly.

‘ “Barber to Customer: ‘My goodness, sir, your hair is getting thin!’ Customer to Barber: ‘Who wants fat hair?’ ” ’

‘Ho, ho, ho,’ Toby said, mournfully. ‘To think we once laughed.’

‘We were young, then,’ Vinny said. ‘Just jolly little toddlers. Grotty old Frodsham’s Fun Book … all those blurry drawings and optical illusions and card tricks and everything …’

‘And “How to Amaze Your Friends”,’ Toby said. ‘ “100 Mystifying Tricks that Any Bright Youngster Can Learn”.’

‘The Sealed-Envelope Mind-reading Trick,’ Vinny said. ‘Remember that? Good, that was. So simple, but nobody ever saw through it.’

They laughed at the memory. Card tricks, mental tricks, conjuring tricks – they had learned them all. The mystical tricks went down best. People wanted to believe the mystical impossible, they discovered.

But then everyone became older. The old tricks no longer thrilled and mystified. Vinny and Toby grew tired of being magicians. More interesting things came up: computers, video games, BMX bikes, camping holidays, all sorts of things. Yet the glamour of the old days, when Toby and Vinny had Amazed their Friends, still lingered on.

All at once, magic was back in fashion. The TV, particularly, was full of magic. A British magician made impossible feats look easy, week after week. In America, a magician made a complete airliner disappear, then the Statue of Liberty. Vinny and Toby saw it happen on the gogglebox.

‘Wow!’ Vinny said, switching off the TV. ‘The things they’re doing nowadays! Perhaps we ought to start again. But we’d have to find something really unusual, really interesting. I mean, like that man who bent spoons and stopped clocks.’

Toby said, ‘We only know about him because Dad put him on video. Everyone else has forgotten him.’

‘Maybe. But his act – mental powers and all that – it’s better than plain conjuring. Bending spoons and stopping clocks and everything. Mystical powers. Mindbending. If we could let people see something like that –’

‘They just thought they saw. Really, there was nothing to see. It was all in the mind.’

‘But that’s just what I’m saying. I bet if we practised enough, we could do mind tricks. You know, willing to make things move. Or knowing which card would be dealt next.’

‘The only thing you could do with your mind,’ Toby said, ‘is stop a clock. Or perhaps your face would do it better.’

‘Don’t be childish,’ Vinny said, primly. She did not want to argue. Something told her that there was more to Mental Magic than clever conjuring. But she did not yet know what that something might be.

Then Aunt Craven came to stay.

Aunt Craven’s visits, like Christmas, didn’t occur often, but they stayed in the mind. Again like Christmas, you could feel the tension building up before the event.

Toby’s and Vinny’s mother, Bets, suffered most from the tension. You could tell that she was frightened of her older sister, Craven, by the way she fussed over everything.

‘Mum’s cooking again!’ Toby told Vinny.

‘Not again,’ Vinny replied. ‘She’ll burst the freezer! What’s she cooking now?’

‘One of those crummy cakes, the health-food ones,’ Toby said. ‘You know, all bran and roughage and free-range sultanas. Real Aunt Craven cake.’

Vinny made a groaning noise. ‘So we’re going to have to eat vegetarian muck,’ she said. ‘No meat, no white bread, no buttered crumpets –’

‘It’s the wrong time of year for crumpets,’ Toby said. ‘Still, I see what you mean. I hate pure food made from natural ingredients.’

‘I hate Aunt Craven,’ Vinny said. ‘Bullying Mum, dominating everything, making us eat horrible food.’

Toby said, ‘Look at old Bloggs! Even he knows Aunt Craven’s coming!’ Bloggs was standing in the doorway, looking humpy and embarrassed. He didn’. . .