Moving House

Loud clumping noises distracted Kevin from his game. It sounded like a plague of giant possums had stormed the roof, but it was just Dad as he scrambled about installing some kind of radar, reckless in his disregard of the blistering sunlight. Indoors, Kevin dripped with sweat. Another year with this bonkers family before he could legally leave home. Though where could he go? Three more years before he could escape to university – that’s if he got accepted. Time stretched into the distance like the Great Wall of China.

Twelve months ago, when they moved to New Zealand, Dad said it was for work; electrical engineers were in short supply and it paid well. Kevin suspected he was trying to outrun the grief of losing Mum to cancer.

“We’ve got to move on,” Dad had said.

Well, he didn’t waste any time. He remarried after only three months in the country. In Kevin’s opinion, Marion seduced Dad with some kind of mind control.

“What are you doing, Kevvie?” screeched Marion from downstairs. Her jarring voice, with that clipped Kiwi accent, sounded like she’d swallowed stinging nettles.

Kevin hated being called Kevvie. “Unpacking,” he yelled back.

Two minutes later, the door swung open. Despite her bulk, Marion could creep around as quietly as a corpse.

Kevin shot up and dropped his X-Box controls.

“Ah-ha! Caught you red-handed, you filthy little liar.” Tempers frayed easily during a heatwave, and pregnancy seemed to have ramped up Marion’s hostility towards Kevin.

“You should knock,” he shouted back. “You know—respect my privacy.”

“You don’t get that privilege until you’ve earned it, young man.” She kept both hands on her basketball belly as if trying to stop something from bursting out like in Alien. “Now, come on. Get this stuff unpacked before I fetch your father. And I’m telling you—he would not be pleased to be interrupted.” Wearing only a vest and miniskirt, and beaded with perspiration, Marion looked like a boiled beetroot. With a final scowl, she waddled out of the room.

Kevin slammed the door behind her.

Even though it meant a room of his own, he hadn’t wanted to move. The apartment in Wellington was just the right size for three: Dad, him and his little brother, Jason. It was between the cinema and the swimming pool, and Kevin had made friends in the neighbourhood. When Marion moved in she got pregnant so quickly Kevin wondered whether it was even his Dad’s baby. With another kid on the way, they needed a bigger home.

Moving house in New Zealand could mean something very different to Scotland. Ryan, Kevin’s only friend to stay in touch beyond the first month, had been sceptical when Kevin first texted.

*

K: They put houses on the back of trucks here!

R: STFU! Im not stupid.

K: For real. They call em transportable homes.

R: You mean like a caravan?

K: No. Proper houses made of wood and they lift em onto a massive truck with a crane.

Kevin sent a photo.

R: FM. Thats awesome!

K: Yeah. Theres this crazy place called a house park and you just wander round and pick the one you like.

*

The contractors shifted the new house to Marion’s family plot five miles out of town. They bought the neighbouring plot for her elderly parents, whose house would be relocated there next year.

“It’s too far for me to cycle back into town to see my mates,” Kevin complained.

“There’s a bus,” Marion told him.

“Yeah, like twice a day...”

Reluctantly, Kevin started unpacking. Cardboard dust prickled his throat. A bundle of wires unravelled past his window with the sound of claws scratching wood. Since Marion introduced Dad to amateur radio, the hobby had magnified into an obsession and he’d just bought some new equipment. Now he was talking about signals to and from outer space. Given the size of the universe, Dad said, contact with extra-terrestrial life was inevitable someday.

The door burst open again. Jason bounced into the room. Although only half Kevin’s age, he had twice the stamina. Small children were energy parasites, Kevin reckoned.

“Have you seen McFangle?” his brother asked. The stuffed toy dinosaur, a gift from Marion, had become Jason’s constant companion. She’d given Kevin a football. He hated sports.

“I flushed it down the toilet.”

Jason fled the room, bawling his eyes out.

“Only joking,” called Kevin.

Over dinner, Dad droned on about his new setup. Kevin zoned out after “parabolic antenna” and started flicking peas at Jason. One hit him in the eye, so he took a handful of mashed potato and threw it at Kevin. It landed in Marion’s cleavage. Kevin snorted, trying to suppress a laugh, and nearly choked on his food.

Marion ran to the bathroom, squealing like a piglet.

“Right, that’s enough,” said Dad. “You two are washing the dishes.”

“But he started it!” said Jason.

“I don’t care. You’re the one who threw potato at your mother.”

“Stepmother,” said Kevin.

Dad stood up and glowered at him. “You need to show Marion more respect,” he said, emphasising his words with an admonishing finger. “Now get on with it. And then you’re both going to bed early.” He followed Marion out of the room.

“Not fair,” mumbled Jason.

Kevin filled the sink with hot water, and lemon-scented bubbles frothed across the surface. Outside the kitchen window, dark clouds gathered. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Wordlessly, he stacked the dishes on the draining board for Jason to dry.

Heavy rain began to fall.

“Wow,” said Kevin as he picked up another dirty plate. “Three months of drought and it rains on our first night in the new house.”

Jason placed a dried bowl on the table and selected a freshly washed plate from the rack. “Will it—”

There was a flash of lightning and a colossal thunderclap. Kevin leapt back and knocked Jason over. The plate slipped through his fingers and shattered, sending shards of china skittering across the floor. Jason howled.

Dad loomed in the doorway. “What’s going on?”

“Jason dropped a plate,” said Kevin.

Dad glanced around at the scattered pieces. “Dammit! That was Marion’s favourite. She’ll be livid.”

“It wasn’t me!” said Jason between sobs. “Kevin did it.”

“Right. Both of you—go to your rooms.”

Jason stomped a foot. “It’s not fair!”

“Life’s not bloody fair, mate.” Dad shook his head. “I’ll have to clear this up. Marion can’t get down on her hands and knees, and I don’t trust either of you not to slice your hands to pieces.”

An hour later, Kevin eased his door open and crept along the landing to eavesdrop on the voices downstairs.

“You’ve got to get that boy under control, Tom,” said Marion in a strangled voice. “He lies all the time. He says he hasn’t got homework when he has. He said he’d lost his phone and got you to buy a new one, when in fact he’d sold it to buy a computer game. It never stops. God knows what he’ll turn out like if you let him get away with it for much longer.”

“I know, love, but he’s had a tough time. First Bella died, then we moved halfway round the world, then I married you, and now we’ve moved again.”

“That’s no excuse. Other kids have been through worse. If discipline doesn’t work, we might have to think about psychiatry.”

Dad didn’t respond immediately. Even from upstairs, Kevin could hear his sigh. Kevin held his breath and scratched at the carpet with clawed hands.

“Let’s just give him a bit more time, eh? I’ll talk to him tomorrow, man to man.”

“Man to boy, more like.”

“We’ll see.”

There was another pause.

“Hey, why don’t we get the new rig fired up?” Marion sounded a little more upbeat. Kevin didn’t know how her mood could flip so quickly. “We could transmit our new message,” she added, “and see if anyone’s listening.”

“Okay, just half an hour though. I’m beat.”

Back in bed, Kevin lay sweltering under a single sheet. He stared into the dark and imagined various modes of retribution against the Evil Stepmother. Maybe he could make her the arch-villain in his graphic novel, and he could make her die a ghastly and agonising death... Eventually, he sank into a fitful sleep.

The bed shook. Kevin jumped up and dashed onto the landing, heart skipping like a ping-pong ball. “Earthquake!” he shouted.

Marion emerged from the bedroom she shared with Dad. “Don’t worry, Kevvie, it’s just a tiny tremmo.” She gave him a humourless smirk. “We get them now and again.”

Patronising bitch, thought Kevin. “Shouldn’t we go outside?”

“No. We’ll be alright. They never come to much around here.” Marion turned her back and tottered to the bathroom.

Before returning to his room, Kevin checked on Jason, who remained sound asleep. He remembered watching the news when the devastating earthquake hit Christchurch in 2016.

“Don’t worry, love,” Mum had said at the time. “It’s the other side of the world. We won’t ever go there.”

Kevin tried to read by torchlight, anticipating another “tremmo”. Next, he played on his X-Box with headphones on and afterwards drew a few aliens for the graphic novel he was writing. At the first hint of dawn, he decided to try sleeping again. As he got into bed, the house shuddered violently. This time, he didn’t wait for anyone else but tore downstairs and out the front door. When he stepped off the porch, the ground wasn’t where it should be and he pitched face-first into a puddle. Winded, he rolled over, wiped his eyes and looked back.

The ground under the house had risen and lifted the whole thing by about fifty centimetres. He a few steps back and glanced around at the sodden earth. As far as he could see, the surrounding area remained undisturbed. Only the house had shifted.

The rest of the family staggered out of the front door, looking half asleep and bewildered. Dad clambered off the porch and helped Marion and Jason down. They stood barefoot in the rain and gaped at the house, now at a slight angle on a shallow dome.

“Looks like ground heave,” said Dad. “With all that rain in the night after such a long drought, you can get bits of land that swell up with water like that.”

“It doesn’t look safe.” Marion shivered and hugged her bosom through her sodden nightie. “We’ll have to shift onto Mum and Dad’s plot.”

Five hours later, through the steamed-up windows of the car where they’d had both breakfast and a picnic lunch after a drive to the shops for supplies, Kevin watched the massive crane reposition their house. It didn’t take long for the workers to reconnect the services. He was surprised at how quickly they got a team out here, but apparently, the quake or heave or whatever was limited to this one plot. Once given the all-clear, the family trudged inside to change into clean, dry clothes.

That night, Kevin still couldn’t sleep. He sat gazing through his open bedroom window. The rainstorm had cleared, and a full moon shone on the puddles; the ground looked like it was splattered with brilliant white paint. Every time he glanced over at the huge mound where their house had been, it seemed to have risen further. Was it just his imagination or a trick of the light?

Eventually, his eyelids fluttered and his head drooped onto his chest. What seemed like a moment later, a low hum resonated through the air. He blinked and peered out the window. The earth swelled and shifted on the plot next door. Kevin gripped the windowsill so tight his fingers hurt. A glow throbbed beneath the surface. Soil cascaded down the side of the bulge. Finally, a silvery-blue metallic dome appeared. Yellow lights pulsed around its edge, and the hum intensified. The object rose until it cleared the ground, dirt falling from its smooth surface.

Kevin sat transfixed, hardly able to breathe, heart buzzing like a bee in a bottle.

The giant saucer-shape hovered for a few seconds and began to spin, slowly at first, then faster and faster, throwing off what remained of the soil. The lights blurred into a continuous line. The hum increased in pitch with the speed, drilling into Kevin’s ears. He tried to cover them but it made no difference. His eardrums would burst if this carried on.

With a roaring whoosh, the object shot into the sky at an impossible speed and disappeared.

As soon as his legs stopped trembling, Kevin rushed into Dad’s bedroom.

“Wake up!” He shook Dad’s shoulder. “Aliens! I saw a UFO! It came out of that mound that pushed the house up.”

Dad lifted his head off the pillow and groaned.

“What the—”

He squinted up at Kevin, who repeated what he’d said.

“That’s the last straw!” shrieked Marion. “Waking us up in the middle of the night with a stupid story like that. You’re a selfish, spiteful little runt. Get back to bed at once, or I will actually have to give you a damn good hiding.”

“But—”

“She’s right.” Dad pointed towards the door. “Go!”

Kevin stomped back to his room, slamming both doors on the way.

In the morning, Kevin stood with Dad on the porch. A massive, water-filled hole occupied the neighbouring plot.

“See, mate, it’s like I said.” Dad pointed at the new pond. “Ground heave caused by a sudden rise in the water table. It swells up and then collapses as the earth gets wet and heavy. It’s a natural phenomenon.” After a minute’s silence, he scratched the stubble on his chin. “This lying’s going to have to stop, you know. One more chance before we send you off to the shrink.”

Kevin didn’t bother to answer. He turned around and walked away. He knew what he’d seen.

After breakfast, Dad drove into town for shopping, taking Jason for the ride. The sun beat down on the wet earth, choking the air with humidity. In the shade of the porch, Marion reclined on a sun-lounger like a fattened sow. Kevin stayed in his room drawing what he’d seen. This was going in the graphic novel for sure.

Twenty minutes later, Kevin heard a scream. He bolted downstairs and out the front door.

“The baby’s coming!” yelled Marion.

Kevin froze. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

“No time! It’s happening now. You’ll have to help.”

“What?” Heart in his mouth, Kevin backed away. “You must be joking! I have no idea what to do.”

 “Please Kevvie – just support it...as it...comes out,” Marion gasped, her face crimson and contorted.

Another piercing scream and Kevin edged to Marion’s side. Despite his dislike of his stepmother, he couldn’t ignore her suffering. Sweating and trembling and feeling sick, he leant forward and looked where he never imagined he would ever have to look. Through half-closed eyes, he saw the head coming. Covered in blood and goo, the squished blob oozed a little further out. Kevin got ready to catch it but had to avert his eyes to avoid puking. Another unearthly scream from Marion and the baby plopped into Kevin’s hands, hot and slimy and heavier than he expected. Now what? People usually burst into tears didn’t they, at the miracle of new life, the beauty of the moment? He’d never seen a newborn before and didn’t quite know what to expect. The baby emitted a high-pitched whine. Kevin looked down.

It had an elongated head and huge, green eyes. Tiny pointed teeth filled its mewling mouth. And it had gills.

Kevin screamed, dropped the thing onto Marion’s chest and ran.

Now he knew it wasn’t Dad’s baby.