by Duncan Ball
Selby hopped to the first rock with great difficulty, teetering for a moment as the water rushed around him. He looked down over the edge of the waterfall.
‘Sheeeesh!’ he thought. ‘This is scary-mary!’
He hopped to the next rock and then the next. On the other side of the river a lumpy-looking kangaroo hopped towards him and stopped.
‘Stay there,’ it said, putting up its paw.
Selby turned around to see an equally lumpy wombat blocking the way.
‘Stop,’ it said.
‘Hey, what is this?!’ Selby thought. ‘Animals aren’t supposed to talk! Everybody knows that.’
Selby watched as the trees and the rocks and bushes moved in on both sides of the river, trapping him in the middle. Then the animals took off their heads.
‘People!’ Selby thought. ‘People in animal suits! Who are they?’
A helicopter roared over Gumboot Mountain and landed next to the river. An old man climbed out and made his way to the riverbank.
‘Hey! That’s what’s-his-face, the guy who owns everything! I’ve seen him on TV!’
‘Selby, let me introduce myself,’ the man called out. ‘I am Morris Arthur, the head of MA Enterprises. My friends call me Morrie Artie, and I’d like us to be friends.’
‘You would?’ Selby thought.
‘We have crossed paths before.’
‘We have?’
‘Remember a little girl whose budgie died and she wanted to know your name?’
‘Fleur?! This guy is Fleur?!’
‘You tricked me then, Selby,’ the Evil Genius said. ‘But this time, I’m afraid I’ve tricked you. I know that you’re the Selby in the Selby books. I know you can talk. So why don’t we have a friendly conversation. Let’s talk about your future, now that you’ve been well and truly sprung.’
‘I’m not going to talk to this guy,’ Selby thought. ‘He’s bluffing.’
‘I know what you’re thinking, Selby. You think I’m bluffing. I can assure you, I’m not. My spy satellites caught you singing and dancing.’
‘Spy satellites? They saw me? Gulp.’
‘We know who you are, and we know you can talk. You can go home to your owners, but the world will know all about you by tomorrow.’
‘Gulp. I don’t like the sound of this,’ Selby thought.
‘There will be people lining up at your door to see you — night and day,’ Morrie Artie continued. ‘You won’t get a moment’s peace. Your life will change. Your owners will put you to work around the house. You might even be dog-napped.’
‘Double gulp.’
‘But let me change all that,’ the old man said. ‘I will make you and the Trifles filthy rich.’
‘Hey, that sounds okay.’
‘You can still live in Bogusville but you will need to be protected, so I’ll build you a castle. It’ll have a moat around it to keep people out, and high walls and a drawbridge and lots of guards. And you and the Trifles will have servants to do everything.’
‘Hey, I like castles,’ Selby thought. ‘And I could keep Willy and Billy and Aunt Jetty out.’
‘You will have everything you could possibly wish for.’
‘I’m beginning to like the sound of this,’ Selby thought. ‘I mean, I can’t go back to my old life now that I’ve been sprung.’
Selby teetered again on his slippery rock and looked over the edge to the cloud of mist below.
The old man continued: ‘I’m a very good judge of humans — and dogs. I can tell what people are thinking even before they think it. Right now you’re wondering if there’s a catch to all this, aren’t you.’
‘Well, I wasn’t,’ Selby thought, ‘but I think I was about to think it.’
‘There is no catch, Selby. I’ve read your books. I know how many close calls you’ve had because of your secret. I know that you’ve had to eat those dreadful Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits and how you’ve had to put up with being picked on by Willy and Billy.’
‘He’s right about that,’ Selby thought.
‘But that’s all about to end. From now on you’ll be a superstar! The whole world will love you! You will host a game show called Selby’s Quiz, a news program called The World According to Selby, another program called Dancing with the Dog. And you’ll be in all my movies.’
‘Hang on a tick,’ Selby thought. ‘This is beginning to sound like work! When do I get to take it easy?’
‘Don’t worry, Selby, you will have days off,’ the old man said. ‘Maybe even one whole day every month.’
‘Whoa, hold the show!’ Selby thought. ‘I don’t like the sound of this deal.’
‘You don’t want to do it, do you? No? Well, I guess it’ll have to be this way,’ the old man said, pointing his Dazer at Selby. ‘Okay, boys, I’ll Daze him and you throw the nets! The dog is not going to get away this time!’
‘Help!’ Selby squealed in his brain. ‘I’ve got nowhere to run! Nowhere to hide! He’s going to shoot me and capture me! Oh, woe woe woe.’
Maybe it was the sight of the Dazer darts heading towards him and the nets flying through the air. Or maybe a sudden surge of water hit his legs, sweeping him off his feet. Or maybe it was just the dizziness from his exhausting struggle against the ever-stiffening Rain Restrain but, before he knew it, Selby had slipped over the edge of the Right-in-Back Falls and was tumbling down, down, down into the mist.
Selby’s life passed in front of his eyes.
‘And now I’m going to die,’ he thought. ‘If the fall doesn’t kill me, I’ll drown. I may be the only talking dog in the world, but I’m also the only non-swimming dog in the world! Dr Trifle’s Rain Restrain has ruined my life! First it made me sing and dance, and then it stopped me running away! Oh, woe woe woe.’
Selby hit the water with a huge splash that drenched Morrie Artie’s agents who were waiting below. He sank in a whirl of bubbles deep in the pool below the waterfall.
‘I’m a goner,’ he whimpered, holding his breath for as long as he could. ‘The fall didn’t kill me but the water will.’
Selby bobbed to the surface. The agents closed in from everywhere. His first instinct was to run — and run he did, doing a furious dog-paddle as the river swept him downstream.
‘Hey!’ he thought. ‘I’m swimming! I’ve never swum before! It’s a miracle! I’ve learned to swim!’
‘Catch him, guys!’ someone yelled. ‘He’s getting away!’
Then from a helicopter above, Morrie Artie’s voice boomed down.
‘Can’t you see that he’s not Selby, you fools?! Selby can’t swim! You found the wrong dog — again! You’re all idiots! And you’re all fired!’
Selby kept swimming downstream as the helicopter headed off towards Bogusville Airport.
At last, he was alone.
‘I’m swimming!’ he thought as he paddled along with the current. ‘I’m actually swimming! How did I learn to swim?! It’s a miracle!’
And then he thought again.
‘It’s not a miracle. It’s Dr Trifle’s Rain Restrain. It’s keeping me afloat because it won’t let the water in! Hey, his invention didn’t ruin my life, it saved me!’
It was a tired and wet dog that scrambled out of the river and struggled home to the Trifles’ house. And it was a grateful couple who burst into tears at the sight of him, clutching him to them.
‘Poor Selby,’ Mrs Trifle cried. ‘He’s as stiff as a board because of that stupid invention of yours. Get the clippers and I’ll give him a good fur-cut.’
Selby sighed as chunks of fur fell to the floor.
‘I don’t need money and castles and servants,’ he thought. ‘I have everything I could possibly want right here with the Trifles, the dearest, most wonderful people on earth.’
Little did Selby know that the end of this story was just the beginning of another and his greatest challenge was about to begin …
For Selby, the end came swiftly and quietly.
It didn’t come with the sound of
secret agents breaking down a door or television trucks screeching to a stop outside the Trifles’ house or even with the wail of sirens or the whirr of helicopters. It didn’t come with spotlights and someone yelling, ‘Come out, Selby! We know you can talk!’
No, the end came with the soft rustle of a piece of paper sliding under the front door. On the paper it said simply ‘Selby, we know it’s you.’ Of course it didn’t really say ‘Selby’, because ‘Selby’ isn’t Selby’s real name. It said his real name and, the moment he saw the note, he knew that he’d been sprung.
‘Who are these people and how did they find me!?’ Selby asked himself. ‘Where are they?!’
That last question was answered by a knock on the door …
To better understand what was happening, let’s go back to the beginning of the end:
It was a dark winter’s evening and Selby was at home alone. His fur had grown back now and he looked his normal self again after Dr Trifle’s disastrous — but life-saving — Rain Restrain.
The drama of what the press now called The Wild Dog Chase had happened months ago. Already there were books, TV shows and even a movie about the ruin of the Evil Genius, Morris Arthur. Once he’d had everything — almost the world itself — but now he was penniless.
Here was a man so clever with numbers that he could do his income tax in his head. He charmed kings and queens and destroyed his enemies with a snap of his fingers. How could such a man believe that there was a talking dog in the world,? everyone wondered. How could he possibly have believed that ‘the only talking dog in Australia and, perhaps, the world’ was a real dog? How could he have risked all of his billions in order to find this phantom? Everyone agreed — the old man had to be bonkers.
On the evening the note was slipped under the door, Selby had been watching a TV documentary that he’d seen many times before. It was called Done Like a Dog, The End of Morris Arthur. The subtitle was The Strange Story of One Man’s Worst Friend.
Of course, until that fateful moment when he noticed that the rocks and bushes were following him through Bogusville Reserve Selby had no idea that there was a Control Centre Selby, deep underground on the other side of the world. He knew that the SSS — the Search for Selby Society — was after him, but he had no idea that they were now just a small part of Morrie Artie’s enormous organisation. Now, watching the documentary, everything became clear. There were interviews with the old man’s former agents, in which they talked about the impossible task of finding a fictional dog. There were even TV images of the final moments of the hunt, with the agents in Australia following a blurry figure through the bush; the confrontation between a dog and Morrie Artie on top of Right-in-Back Falls; and the tiny figure of Selby hurtling down into the river below and swimming away.
‘I wonder whose dog he is?’ Dr Trifle said to Mrs Trifle when they’d seen it the first time. ‘He looks just a teeny-weeny bit like Selby.’
‘But he can’t be,’ Mrs Trifle said, ‘because our darling dog can’t swim a stroke. How could a clever man like Mr Arthur have been that silly?’
The last minutes of the program were about the crash of the old man’s empire. His mansions and aeroplanes and yachts and all his possessions had to be sold to pay the money he owed. The last picture was of the Evil Genius sitting on a street corner, with his hat on the ground, holding a sign that said:
DOG-ATTACK VICTIM.
PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY.
A shiver of pity went through Selby every time he saw that scene.
‘I do feel sorry for him,’ he thought, ‘but he was incredibly greedy. Why would anyone want to own the whole world?’
There was another knock at the door.
‘Open the door, Selby,’ a voice called out.
‘Who can it be?!’ Selby thought. ‘It can’t be the Evil Genius and it can’t be any of the people who worked for him, because now they don’t believe I’m real.’
The knocking got louder.
‘We know you’re in there and we know who you are! Open the door! Don’t worry, Selby, we just want to talk to you!’
‘Well, I’m not going to talk to you,’ Selby thought, as he ran for the back door. ‘I’m outta here!’
Maybe it was the fresh memory of the Evil Genius and his agents almost catching him. Or maybe it was just the note appearing without warning. For whatever reason, Selby made a fatal mistake — he ran.
He shot out the back door, chewing the fateful note as he flew over the fence into the laneway. He ran full tilt towards the end of the lane only then noticing the shadowy shapes blocking his way. They turned their torches on him, momentarily blinding him.
‘Who are these people?!’ he screamed in his brain as he turned and ran in the other direction. ‘And why are they after me?!’
More people blocked this way too. Selby shielded his eyes from their torches.
‘So you are him, aren’t you?’ a voice said. ‘You read the note and you ran because you knew what it said. You just fell for the oldest trick in the book.’
‘Gulp,’ Selby gulped. ‘He’s right, I should’ve just stayed there and pretended I didn’t know what was happening. I thought they knew! They didn’t know! They only suspected! I’m done!, — but I’m not done yet …’
Selby hurled himself up and over a neighbour’s fence, and in a second he was tearing down a side passage.
Behind him was the sound of pounding feet and cries of ‘After him!’ and ‘Don’t let him get away!’
Selby raced down the street, with the screaming crowd just behind him. Fear clawed its way up his spine and stuck with a tingle in the back of his head. He plunged into bushes, tearing through them, snapping off branches as he went. But his pursuers were close behind and fanned out through the trees around him.
‘I can’t go any faster!’ he thought. ‘They’re surrounding me! I wish I was a cat so I could shoot up a tree, but I’m not! Oh, woe woe woe.’
Selby crashed through a bush and into a clearing but they were all around him now. He felt their ropes whip round his body, tripping him and sending him sliding through the dirt. He tried to struggle to his feet but now there were more and more ropes, and before he knew it he was tied up like a moth larva in a cocoon.
‘We’re not going to hurt you,’ a little voice said.
Selby squinted at the figures around him.
‘Turn off your torches,’ someone said.
Slowly Selby’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. He could just make out their small bodies as they lifted him from the dirt and tied him to a tree.
‘Help!’ Selby thought. ‘I’ve been captured by pygmies!’
‘We just want to talk to you,’ a girl said. ‘You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. But we already know it’s you. We’re not going to torture you or anything.’
‘Well, that’s one good thing,’ Selby thought.
‘You’re probably wondering how we sprang you.’
‘Yes, I am,’ Selby thought. ‘Hey, these are just little kids! I’ve been captured by kids!’
‘Let me explain,’ the girl said. ‘We’re Class 5/6B from Bogusville Public School. And don’t worry, Willy and Billy aren’t here. They don’t know anything about this. Our librarian, Miss Bonzer, had us do a project about Selby — the talking dog in the books. She thinks you’re a made-up dog. Anyway, we read lots of stories about you. And we talked about you. Then somebody — I can’t remember who — said, “Hey, maybe he’s real.”’
‘That was me!’ a girl called out.
‘Okay, so it was you, Karla. Big deal. Anyway, we thought that maybe the real Selby — or whatever his name is — might live right here in Bogusville.’
‘And then,’ a boy said, ‘we remembered when you got out of that sky-writing plane. Remember when the guy in the plane wrote that the Trifles were “the dearest, most wonderful people on earth”?’
‘We knew that the real Selby must have written it,’ the girl said. ‘We were at the airport when the pl
ane landed. There was this pilot dude and there was you!’ she said, pointing a finger.
‘Is she kidding?’ Selby thought. ‘Come to think of it, I do remember some kids at the airport.’
‘So we set a trap for you,’ the boy said, ‘and you fell right into it.’
‘I sure did,’ Selby thought. ‘I wonder what they’re (sniff) going to (sniff) do with me.’
‘You’re probably wondering what we’re going to do with you,’ the girl said. ‘Well, we’re going to tell everyone! And we’re going to be famous. Of course, they may not believe us. Nobody ever believes kids.’
Selby’s whole life flashed in front of his eyes again. He remembered the first time he realised he could understand people-talk and how he learned to talk and how he rang Duncan Ball to tell him his adventures. He remembered when he was a movie star and all the times he’d fallen in love and all the wonderful things that had happened to him.
‘Kids!’ Selby thought. ‘I was hunted by thousands of the best spies and secret agents in the whole world and they didn’t catch me. Now I’ve been captured by a bunch of kids!’
‘Okay,’ the girl said, unwinding the ropes from around him. ‘You can go now. We didn’t mean to scare you, but it was the only way we could prove to you that we know who you are. Of course, we hoped you’d talk to us.’
Selby watched as the kids began to leave.
‘What am I going to do now?’ he thought. ‘The kids will tell everyone! I won’t be able to go out of the house, because people will point and say, “Look! He’s the one the kids think can talk!” Some people will believe it and some won’t but they’ll drive me nuts! They will ruin my life forever! I’ll have to leave town and never come back. I’ll go into hiding. Maybe I’ll live in a cave. I can’t ever (sniff) see the Trifles again. But I can’t (sniff) do it! I can’t leave them! Oh, woe woe woe.’
Selby’s brain snapped. It went from woe to go in a second as a thought popped into it.
‘Okay,’ he said out loud. ‘I’ll talk.’
Class 5/6B turned around.
