Locked In

by Z. Fraillon

He turned around, but all the kids were standing still, speechless.

  His stomach flipped a single warning somersault. Nothing made sense.

  ‘This is weird,’ Saffy said bluntly. ‘First we’re put on a plane, then we’re hypnotised to sleep ... what is this? Some secret spy agency? I mean, really,’ she huffed.

  ‘And then we arrive back where we started – except not,’ said Jasper.

  He heard the faint whispering again. ‘And what’s with that whispering?’ he asked Saffy.

  She looked at him strangely. ‘I can’t hear any whispering,’ she said.

  A group of older kids strode in formation towards the plane. They looked as if they had muscles growing on top of muscles. They were so huge they could have stepped out of a comic book. They wore black camouflage suits with heavy black boots. Every one of them had black hair, cut short and slicked back. They were definitely not the kind of kids you would mess with. Jasper wondered how long it’d be before he ended up in a fight – and probably lost a fight – with one of them.

  ‘Ah,’ said Saffy, ‘the welcoming party.’

  The Prefects

  The older kids herded the new arrivals through the snowy field towards the old mansion.

  Jasper felt uneasy not knowing where he was. He wondered if he could somehow get his bearings from the stars at night, but with all the snowy cloud cover, he didn’t think he would have much luck. And then there was the small fact that he didn’t know much about stars.

  ‘How are we supposed to nick off from school if we have no idea where to nick off to?’ he mumbled.

  Saffy smirked. ‘A school hasn’t beaten me yet,’ she replied smugly. ‘Kids from my old school called me Houdini.’

  Jasper noticed Saffy carefully surveying their surroundings. He remembered how she’d looked at the map at the other Monstrum House campus, and wondered if she was thinking of an escape plan. He certainly was. He’d taken a mental note of the forest, potential points of weakness and details that might prove useful.

  Saffy nodded confidently. ‘Give me a week, and I’ll be outta here.’

  ‘Quiet!’ one of the older kids ordered. Jasper and Saffy fell silent. Jasper gave the boy a mock salute behind his back, making Saffy snort back a laugh.

  The boy turned and glared at her, and Saffy faked a cough. ‘Dry throat,’ she said.

  The boy sneered and spoke softly into a two-way radio, before walking on.

  They entered the mansion through the large wooden doors, just as they had at the first Monstrum House. Their footsteps echoed along the same cold stone floor. The marble staircase was the same too, right down to the tattered rug that ran the length of the stairs. But the paintings were different. Instead of stern-looking generals staring down at them, the frames were full of shadowy battle scenes.

  Underneath the paintings stood a line of statues of children, all of them caught with shocked expressions on their faces. A marble plaque above them said:

  LEST WE FORGET.

  Cheery, Jasper thought, and seriously weird.

  He peered down a corridor and saw a few older kids walking between classes. They wore hoodies and tracksuit pants like the new kids, but their hoodies were red and blue instead of brown. They looked friendly enough, unlike the kids that were marching them along.

  ‘Do you reckon this lot are prefects or something?’ Saffy whispered to Jasper, nodding towards their guides.

  ‘Must be, but they look more like relations of the Incredible Hulk,’ Jasper whispered back. He imagined the prefects’ skin turning green and their muscles ripping through their clothes. His fingers were itching to draw them. He thought of his room at home, the walls covered with comic strips he had drawn. Then he remembered he didn’t have his backpack with his sketchbook in it anymore. They’d been told to leave all their possessions on the plane.

  ‘No personal possessions allowed,’ a passing teacher commented. Jasper wondered if he had spoken out loud.

  ‘What?’ Saffy asked, outraged. ‘That is so bogus. I’ve got a brand-new kickboxing mag in my backpack. It cost fifteen bucks!’

  The teacher ignored her and kept walking.

  The new students were led into the middle of a large, empty hall. An enormous school emblem hung at one end, and Jasper noticed for the first time that it had a big net in the middle. No wonder I feel trapped, he thought.

  4

  A tall, thin woman in a grey suit walked up and down the row of new students. Her hair was the brightest white Jasper had ever seen, and stuck out from her head in a crazy mohawk. Her face was sharp and angular, and looked hard enough to bounce rocks off.

  The name tag pinned to her chest said ‘Stenka’. She didn’t look like someone you’d want to argue with.

  She marched between the students, handing out bright green smocks. Each smock had a student’s surname embroidered on the front and back in gold letters. Even though they’d only just arrived, Stenka seemed to know exactly which smock belonged to which student.

  Stenka

  ‘The smocks are to be worn for your first week,’ she said icily.

  A groan went up around Jasper. ‘Is she serious?’ a girl behind him moaned.

  Jasper wondered what the purpose of the smocks was. None of the other kids he’d seen in the school were wearing them.

  Saffy sighed as she checked out her smock, but she didn’t look particularly worried.

  ‘The smocks are to enable the prefects and other students to learn your names,’ Stenka said, as if in answer to Jasper’s thoughts. ‘We are a very ...’ Stenka paused to think of the right words ‘... close community here at Monstrum House,’ she smiled. It was not a nice smile.

  ‘Swap?’ Saffy whispered to Jasper as the rest of the new students pulled their smocks on over their hoodies. She was holding her smock out towards him, a grin spread across her face. Jasper grabbed it and pulled it on, trying not to laugh out loud.

  A clip-clopping echoed around the walls, and an old man on a grey horse trotted into the hall. He wore a bright purple cape and a plumed helmet, and he held a covered cage of some sort.

  ‘I would like to introduce you to Principal Von Strasser,’ Stenka said, smiling even more widely.

  Jasper had to hold back a chuckle. The guy was ancient and looked completely dotty. Did she say principal? Jasper couldn’t believe it. He was like something out of a dodgy medieval movie.

  Principal Von Strasser

  ‘Welcome to Monstrum House,’ Principal Von Strasser announced in a gravelly voice.

  The prefects applauded loudly, and glared at the new students until they joined in.

  ‘You may have noticed that this is no ordinary school. Here you will learn things you never thought possible,’ Principal Von Strasser proclaimed, as he pranced up and down the the rows of students on his horse. ‘You will learn the most important survival skills, and you will be expected to use them.’

  Jasper wondered if survival skills included dressing up like a loon and riding around on a horse.

  The principal paused and glanced at the prefects. ‘Thank you for your help, prefects, but I believe you have somewhere to be?’

  There was a moment of confusion before the prefects realised they were no longer required. The head prefect gave an order to the rest, and they nodded at Von Strasser before jogging out of the hall.

  Von Strasser peered down at the new students from his horse. ‘At Monstrum House,’ he rasped, ‘you will not be expected to learn trivial, unimportant things like English, geography and maths. Oh no ...’

  Jasper glanced at Saffy. ‘Now we’re talking,’ she whispered.

  ‘At Monstrum House,’ Von Strasser continued, ‘you will be taught how to hunt. Monsters.’

  A stunned silence met his announcement. Surely they had misheard him.

  He’s completely bonkers, Jasper thought.

  ‘You might think monsters aren’t real,’ Principal Von Strasser addressed the silenced room. ‘Your parents probably told you that monsters a
ren’t real. But they are real. And you know they are real.’ He fingered the cage held in his hand.

  There was a nervous twitter of laughter around the room. Everyone had spent their whole lives being told not to believe in monsters, and here was a crazy, wrinkled old man telling them that monsters actually existed.

  ‘Strange things happen every day,’ Von Strasser continued as he clip-clopped along the row of students. ‘Curious disappearances, random attacks. These,’ he said, ‘are the work of monsters.’ Any quiet sniggers in the room had now died. ‘But not all monsters are violent. Some prefer simply to frighten people. That is what they are doing in your bedroom at night, by the way.’

  This is crazy, thought Jasper. But he felt his guts twisting into an uncertain knot.

  Von Strasser’s horse came to a halt right in front of him. The horse looked Jasper dead in the eye and snorted. Von Strasser peered at Jasper from underneath his feathered helmet.

  ‘Aahh, Mr McPhee. Glad to see you finally made it,’ the old man whispered with a conspiratorial wink. ‘Although it appears that you have mixed up your smock with that of Ms Dominguez,’ he said, flicking his eyes towards Saffy. ‘And just so you know, it is much harder to stuff a banana skin in a horse’s tailpipe than a car’s.’

  Jasper felt his jaw drop open slightly.

  The principal paused. ‘The smocks,’ he reminded them.

  Jasper and Saffy quickly swapped their smocks over. ‘I don’t know how that could have happened,’ Jasper mumbled.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Von Strasser replied, just the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

  The horse snorted again, stomping its foot impatiently before clopping away.

  Von Strasser surveyed the new students. ‘This school has a long history as one the best monster-hunting schools in the world,’ he boomed. ‘We have produced some of the top monster-hunters, and our Hunts are highly successful. But monster numbers are growing. They are everywhere. Indeed, each of you has already encountered a monster, even if you didn’t know what it was at the time.’

  ‘After all,’ Von Strasser continued, ‘if monsters aren’t real, then why does the door to your wardrobe always hang open just a little bit, when you know you closed it before turning off the light?’

  Jasper looked at Saffy. He wondered if she, like him, was trying not to think about the fact that things did seem to move in the dark.

  ‘Monsters wait for the darkness to come,’ Von Strasser boomed. ‘You have felt them in the shadows, waiting for the moment to attack. You’ve felt them under the bed, waiting for you to fall into the deep sleep that makes you defenceless.’

  Jasper was beginning to feel uneasy. Not quite scared, but close.

  Von Strasser stopped and pointed his finger abruptly at the students. ‘You feel them just before they attack. An ice-cold chill runs down your spine when they are close.’

  Jasper was feeling that chill as the principal spoke. And he couldn’t pretend it was just the cold this time.

  And then Von Strasser uncovered the cage.

  The thing inside snarled, tearing at the wire bars with its horns and fangs, and flicking its long sticky tongue at the terrified students. Its nostrils flared wide, and it let out a piercing screech that shook the windows and split Jasper’s eardrums.

  Saffy gasped.

  Jasper took a step back in horror.

  No-one could say that monsters didn’t exist anymore.

  5

  ‘A Blibberwail,’ said the older boy who was sitting opposite Jasper and Saffy. He wore a red hoodie with the school emblem and the words Hunt Captain sewn across the front. The younger kids huddled around the table, trying to hear what he was saying.

  The food hall was packed with kids chatting noisily and picking at their dinner of stale bread and mouldy cheese. The new students had been assigned seats next to older kids, who wore red or blue hoodies depending on their year level.

  The prefects paraded up and down, speaking quietly into their radios at regular intervals. None of the kids seemed to take much notice of them. There was no sign of teachers anywhere, but Jasper got the unpleasant feeling they were watching all the same.

  ‘It was a Blibberwail in that cage,’ the older boy continued. ‘I’m Mac, by the way.’

  ‘I’m Jasper, and this is Saffy,’ Jasper spoke up. The boy seemed nice – nothing like the prefects at least. It had been a very strange day and it was good to talk to someone who knew what was going on.

  ‘At a normal school,’ Mac continued quietly, ‘you get punished with detention. You know, sitting in the library for an hour, or cleaning up the school grounds during lunch.’

  Jasper thought of the masses of detentions he had been given at his old schools.

  Blibberwail

  ‘But at Monstrum House ...’ Mac paused as the head prefect came closer to their table. Mac obviously didn’t want him to hear what he was saying. The prefect looked about sixteen and had a scar running down the right side of his face. He sneered and kept walking.

  Mac leant in more closely. ‘At Monstrum House,’ he repeated, ‘a punishment could mean getting locked in the basement for three hours in the middle of the night. With a Blibberwail.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ scoffed Saffy. ‘Like they could do that. There are laws against stuff like that.’

  But after what they had seen of Monstrum House so far, Jasper wasn’t so sure.

  ‘Seriously,’ said Saffy, ‘this is all a wind-up, right? I mean, that ... that ... thing isn’t really kept in the basement, is it?’

  ‘I’ve had a few punishments down there,’ Mac smiled. ‘If you end up in the basement with the Blibberwail there are two things you can do. The first is to try to catch it, and keep it caught until your three hours are up. The second is to hide, and hope its three noses don’t sniff you out.’

  He’s for real, Jasper thought in amazement.

  Mac went on. ‘I’ve tried both of these, and neither of them is much fun. That Blibberwail is really hard work.’

  Jasper shuddered. There was no way he wanted to earn a punishment.

  ‘Von Strasser said something about hunting?’ Jasper asked Mac.

  Mac smiled again. ‘It’s what we’re taught to do here – how to track down and catch monsters in the outside world. We’re the ones who protect people from being Monstered,’ he said eagerly. ‘I love Hunts – but then, I am a hunt captain, so you might not want to take my word for it. Sometimes new kids are a bit freaked out. But you’ll come to love it.’ Mac seemed excited just thinking about it.

  Jasper wondered how you could ever enjoy hunting something that wanted to hunt you.

  ‘The other cool thing about Hunts is that they’re done in teams of kids. No teachers,’ Mac continued. ‘And certainly none of the thug brigade.’ He gestured towards the prefects.

  ‘Who are they?’ squeaked a small boy with mountains of curly blond hair. Jasper hadn’t even seen him there, quivering in the next seat. The boy’s green smock said WARF. He was so small he was easy to miss.

  ‘I’m Jasper,’ he said, feeling sorry for the little kid.

  ‘Um ... Bertie,’ the small boy whispered, looking down at his smock. ‘Bertie Warf.’

  ‘Well, Bertie Warf,’ said Mac, ‘those thugs are prefects. They’re not monster-hunters. They’re all from the other Monstrum House – the actual military school. Those kids who didn’t get on the plane with you are stuck there, saluting and drilling their way through school. In their final year, the biggest and dumbest of them will come here and join the thug brigade. But they won’t go on Hunts.’

  ‘But they look like they’d be good at hunting. They’re huge,’ said Jasper, thinking they’d be much more use than weedy Bertie.

  ‘No way,’ said Mac. ‘To be a monster-hunter, you need certain characteristics. For a start, you have to be able to think for yourself. It’s not just about muscle. We were selected to come here because we have what it takes, and they don’t. Anyway,’ he continued
, ‘they’re all older than us – sixteen or seventeen, usually – and their brains are so small they can’t see monsters anymore. In fact, they don’t even know monsters exist.’

  ‘How can they be at a monster-hunting school and not know monsters exist?’ scoffed Saffy.

  ‘The teachers make sure they don’t find out,’ said Mac. ‘The prefects think this is a school for serious troublemakers and that they’re here to keep the kids in line. This is like their tour of duty or something. They’re sent work from the other school, about war tactics and military stuff. The rest of the time they’re just the teachers’ guard dogs.’

  No wonder they look so nasty, Jasper thought.

  ‘They’re not very bright,’ Mac went on, ‘but you should still watch out for them. Especially that one,’ he said, nodding towards the head prefect who was coming closer. ‘They can all get you into trouble, and they do work closely with the teachers.’ Then he called out, ‘Isn’t that right, Bruno? You lot love the teachers.’

  The head prefect sneered. ‘Shut it, Mac. You’re already on eighteen penalty points. Just two more and you’re up for a punishment. Don’t tempt me.’

  Mac grinned, but didn’t push it. ‘We get penalty points whenever we do something wrong,’ he explained. ‘Twenty points and you’re punished – with something like the Blibberwail.’

  Mac waited until Bruno had moved further away. ‘You will all get to go on Hunts. Unless the teachers decide you don’t have what it takes to hunt monsters. If you’re no good, you’ll be shipped back to the first Monstrum House, and we’ll see you in a couple of years dressed in camo gear, and thick as two bricks.’

  Jasper decided he would definitely rather be with kids like Mac than kids like Bruno.

  ‘What I don’t get is, if this place is for real, how have they managed to keep it secret?’ asked Saffy. ‘We can write home – so why doesn’t someone report it?’

  ‘And end up in the loony bin?’ Mac replied. ‘Would you believe a kid who said they were at a school that made them hunt monsters?’