As I ran, I saw frightened students watching me from the safety of their classrooms. But all the doors were locked. There was nowhere for me to hide.
Finally, as I began to tire, the lion pounced.
I turned around and looked up as the terrifying beast, every pencil on its mane trembling, opened its enormous jaws to reveal not a mouth full of teeth, but rows and rows of sharpened pencils, going as far back down its throat as I could see.
I woke, dripping with perspiration.
That was one bad lion.
And one even badder pencil.
32
Waking up
I awoke on the floor of my bedroom. There were pencil shavings all around me, but whether they had already been there before I went to bed or whether they were from the pencil lion I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that the pencil was bad news.
Mr Brainfright had almost choked to death and had fallen out the window.
Fred and Clive were in hospital.
Jack was lucky he wasn’t in jail.
Gretel had broken her wrist, I’d almost lost my head and now Jenny had been cut in half and almost eaten by a lion. (Well, Jenny being cut in half wasn’t technically the pencil’s fault, but everything else sure was.)
What—or who—would be next?
I had to get rid of the pencil before anyone else was hurt. The problem was that I didn’t have it. It was in my pencil case on my desk at school—and knowing how attached to the pencil Jack was, I didn’t think he’d take kindly to my plans to destroy it.
That meant I had to get to school and get rid of the pencil before Jack arrived.
I looked at the clock. It was 7.30 am. If I hurried I could make it.
I got up off the floor, kicked the pencil shavings under the bed, and ran out the door.
33
Rewind
I returned to my room moments later, realising that I still had my pyjamas on.
I took my pyjamas off.
I put my school uniform on.
I had some breakfast.
I brushed my teeth.
And then I ran out the door and straight to school.
34
Escaped pencil
There were only a few students in the yard when I arrived at school.
I walked up the steps, down the corridor and into the 5B classroom.
It was still a bit messy after yesterday’s lion attack. We hadn’t had a chance to put the room back in order because Mr Brainfright had given us all the rest of the day off school (after he’d put Jenny back together again, of course).
My pencil case was sitting on top of the desk. I opened it carefully, but the pencil wasn’t inside.
Then, on a hunch, I went over to Jack’s desk.
I lifted the lid and, looking around to check that I was still alone, picked up Jack’s pencil case. I closed the desk lid carefully and tugged at the zipper of the pencil case.
It didn’t open.
I tugged again.
It still didn’t open.
I tugged even harder.
This time it did open—spilling its content all over the floor with a loud clatter.
I looked up, hoping that Jack wasn’t standing in the doorway. He wasn’t. I still had the room to myself.
I kneeled and started scooping the pens and pencils back into Jack’s pencil case. Pens, pencils, erasers, sharpeners, textas, rulers, staplers: I couldn’t believe how much stuff he managed to fit into one pencil case.
There was only one thing missing . . . my pencil!
I stood up and put the pencil case back in Jack’s desk. He must have guessed what I was going to do and had taken the pencil home for safekeeping. I clenched my fist and punched the desk. I was too late.
That’s when I heard it—a faint sound on the far side of the room. It was the pencil, rolling towards the door!
I don’t know if it was still rolling from the impact of being dropped or if it was trying to escape . . . but I did know that I had to stop it before it got out that door.
I leaped across the room in one bound and landed sprawling in front of the door, just ahead of the pencil.
I looked up.
It was rolling straight towards me, and probably would have rolled right over the top of me if I hadn’t reached out and grabbed it just in time.
The pencil seemed to squirm in my grasp as if it were a living thing.
Well, it wouldn’t be living for much longer.
I got up, ran down the corridor and out into the yard, looking for a suitable place to get rid of it. But before I could do so, I saw Jack and Jenny coming through the school gate on the other side of the yard.
‘Hi, Henry!’ Jack called.
Oh no! I looked around. There was a rubbish bin a few metres away. I had no choice. I threw the pencil in, and walked across the yard to meet them.
‘Hi, Jack!’ I said, as innocently as I could manage. ‘Hi Jenny! How are you?’
‘I’m all right,’ said Jenny. ‘The real question is, how are you? You seem a little upset.’
‘I’m fine!’ I said, perhaps a little too quickly.
‘Are you sure?’ said Jack. ‘You don’t look fine.’
‘Oh, you know,’ I said. ‘I guess I’m still a bit rattled after what happened yesterday.’
Jack looked at me closely and nodded. ‘I guess we all are,’ he said. ‘Just think about it. Of all the schools in Northwest the lion chose Northwest Southeast Central, and of all the classrooms in the school it chose ours! Talk about bad luck!’
‘Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t,’ I said.
‘What do you mean, Henry?’ asked Jenny. ‘That it wasn’t bad luck?’
‘Who can say?’ I said. ‘And I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s all over now.’ I shrugged, suddenly feeling very light and free. The pencil was safely in the bin. It couldn’t hurt anybody ever again.
Or so I thought . . .
35
Wishes
‘Well, yesterday was exciting, wasn’t it?’ asked Mr Brainfright.
‘Exciting?’ said David. ‘Jenny was almost killed!’
‘No thanks to you!’ said Gretel.
‘What do you mean by that?’ said David.
‘You were so scared you jumped out the window!’
David shook his head. ‘I didn’t do it because I was scared,’ he said. ‘I went to get help!’
‘By jumping out a window?’ said Gretel.
‘Well, I couldn’t exactly go out the door, could I? There was a lion in the way!’
‘All right, calm down,’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘It’s over now. And thanks to Newton’s quick thinking, nobody was hurt.’
Newton’s face reddened. ‘It wasn’t really quick thinking,’ he said. ‘I just got such a fright when the lion roared that my arm jerked and the rabbit’s foot flew out of my hand.’
‘Nevertheless, you managed to distract Kitty at a crucial moment, thus saving Jenny’s life,’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘You should be very proud of yourself, Newton. Not only did you save Jenny, but you confronted nine of your top ten fears all at the same time!’
‘I’m still scared of lions, though,’ said Newton.
‘But Jenny’s alive, and that’s the important thing!’ said Mr Brainfright.
‘I wish it had been a pony that escaped from the circus,’ said Gina.
‘I wish it had been a whole bunch of ponies,’ Penny chimed in. ‘Dancing ponies with plumes and sparkly saddles!’
‘Speaking of ponies,’ said Mr Brainfright, ‘how are your horses, girls?’
‘The lion got them,’ said Gina sadly.
‘Are they all right?’ asked Jenny.
‘No,’ Penny replied. ‘They’re in the hospital.’
‘In a very serious condition,’ added Gina.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Mr Brainfright.
Jack sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘I’m only sorry that it wasn’t a T-Rex that escaped. It would have stood on th
e horses and then it would have squashed the whole school and we would have gotten the rest of the year off!’
‘Be careful what you wish for, Jack,’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘Because it might just come true.’
‘That’s what my mother always says,’ said Jenny.
‘She’s a wise woman,’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘Wishes are dangerous things. Sometimes they come true, but not quite in the way you expect. My father once told me a story about a friend of his who—No, I can’t tell you that . . . much too frightening for a Wednesday morning.’
‘Ohhhh!’ groaned the class all in one voice. ‘Tell us! Please!’
Mr Brainfright shook his head. ‘No . . . I can’t . . . It’s really not suitable . . .’
‘Please!’ we begged. ‘Pleeeeease!’
Mr Brainfright looked at the door. Then he shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But don’t tell anybody I told you this . . . and don’t say I didn’t warn you!’
We nodded.
36
The monkey’s paw
Mr Brainfright came around to the front of his desk and leaned in close. ‘It happened to a friend of my father’s,’ he began. ‘He was given a monkey’s paw by a traveller who swore that it had the power to grant the owner three wishes.’
‘A monkey’s paw?’ said Fiona. ‘Don’t monkeys have hands and feet?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘But they are also called paws.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Fiona, making a note.
Mr Brainfright continued. ‘Naturally my father’s friend was sceptical, and who could blame him? After all, what magical properties could a monkey’s paw—of all things—possess? But, nevertheless, his son urged him to try it out.
‘My father’s friend protested, saying he had no need of anything, but the son insisted and finally he convinced his father to wish for twenty thousand dollars to pay off the money they owed on their house. They waited, and waited, and waited. But nothing happened. The man put the monkey’s paw on the mantelpiece, laughed about it and went to bed.
‘The following day, however, they had a visitor. It was a man from the factory where the son worked. Apparently, the son had been killed that morning in a terrible accident. His clothing had got caught in a machine and he’d been sucked into it, his body horribly mangled.
‘My father’s friend and his wife were devastated by the news, and even more upset when the man from the company presented them with a cheque for twenty thousand dollars as compensation.
‘You see, the man ended up getting what he wished for, but not quite in the way he’d expected to get it . . . and indeed, in a way that he greatly wished he never had.’
Mr Brainfright drew a deep breath.
The class was completely silent.
‘Is that the end of the story?’ said Fiona.
‘If only it had been!’ said Mr Brainfright. ‘But alas, no . . . A few weeks after the grieving parents had buried their son in a graveyard two kilometres from their home, the wife of the man sat up in bed and said, “The monkey’s paw! We still have two wishes! Why don’t we wish our son alive again?”
‘My father’s friend was very reluctant—after all, the monkey’s paw had tricked them the first time, but his wife wouldn’t be put off. He finally took the monkey’s paw in his hand and wished his son alive again.’
‘And did he come alive again?’ Newton asked in a shaky voice.
‘Well, no,’ said Mr Brainfright.
There was a collective sigh of relief from the class.
‘Not at first . . .’
There was a collective gasp.
‘The man and the wife went back to bed,’ Mr Brainfright continued. ‘But two hours later, they heard a tap at the door downstairs. “What’s that?” said the wife. “Just rats,” said the man. “No,” said the wife, “it’s our son! He’s come back. We should have realised! The cemetery is over two kilometres away. It’s taken him this long to walk back!”
‘There was another tap . . . and another . . . and yet another . . . And before my father’s friend could stop her, his wife leaped out of bed and headed downstairs. But not him. He had a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling. Their son’s body had been mangled in a machine. Given the way the monkey’s paw had tricked them on the first wish, even if their son was alive, who could tell what condition he would be in, or whether he would even really be their son?
‘Tap, tap, tap . . .
‘The man dived onto the floor searching for where he’d dropped the monkey’s paw after his second wish. He had to find it before his wife opened the door!
‘Tap, tap, tap . . .
‘The man could hear his wife drawing the bolt on the front door.
‘Tap, tap, tap . . .
‘Just as his wife was about to open the door, the man found the paw, held it tight in his hand, and wished his son, or what was left of him, dead again.
‘His wife opened the door and there was nothing there except for the sound of the wind.’
As Mr Brainfright finished his story a collective shiver ran through the class as we imagined what might have been standing on the other side of that door.
Then, all of a sudden . . .
37
Tap, tap, tap ...
Tap, tap, tap . . .
There was tapping on our classroom door.
Everybody in the entire class screamed and jumped out of their chairs at the same time.
All except David Worthy.
David went even further.
He jumped out the window . . . again!
Newton made the strange, high-pitched noise he’d made yesterday, involuntarily flinging his rabbit’s foot across the room and into the face of a girl from grade three who had come to our door.
‘Ouch,’ she said.
‘Don’t panic, everybody,’ said Mr Brainfright, grinning. ‘It’s just a monitor.’ He picked up Newton’s rabbit’s foot and tossed it back to him.
‘I’ll go and tell David,’ said Jack, getting up and putting his head out the window. ‘It’s okay, David, it’s not a lion or a mangled factory worker! It’s a classroom monitor!’
‘I knew that!’ David called back. ‘Don’t think I was jumping out the window because I was scared. I just needed some fresh air.’
‘Okay, David,’ said Jack, smiling. ‘Have it your way!’
‘That’s enough, Jack.’ Mr Brainfright chuckled as he turned to the girl. ‘Now, how may we help you?’
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ she said, looking more than a little freaked out by our class’s behaviour. ‘I was on bin duty and I found this pencil in one of the bins. It’s a pretty good one, and it has the name of one of your students on it: Henry McThrottle.’
I was shocked to see the pencil again.
Very shocked.
In fact, I was so shocked that my heart actually stopped beating.
And then it started again, which was good, because if it hadn’t I wouldn’t have been able to write this sentence.
Or this one.
Or this one.
Or, well . . . you get the idea.
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Brainfright, taking the pencil from the monitor. ‘There you are, Henry,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘I believe this is yours.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, although gratitude was the last thing I was feeling. I’d hoped never to see that pencil again.
‘What was it doing in the bin?’ Jack whispered. ‘Did you throw it away?’
‘I tried to,’ I said. ‘But it obviously has other ideas!’
‘Just give it to me if you don’t want it!’ said Jack.
‘I can’t,’ I told him. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
Jack rolled his eyes.
I looked at the pencil.
It had my name on it, written along the side.
The strange thing was that I didn’t remember writing my name on it.
It’s possible that I did write it, of course, but I didn’t remember writing it. Which was weird
.
But then, everything about this pencil was weird.
Including the fact that it was proving very difficult to get rid of.
38
Skull Island
After eating lunch, I gave Jack the slip, and headed straight for the top of Skull Island, a small hill in our school grounds. It was where we had found Principal Greenbeard’s buried treasure.
I figured that if I couldn’t throw the pencil away then I’d bury it right back in the place it had come from. It had lain there for at least thirty years without hurting anybody. It could lie there for another thirty years as far as I was concerned. Or, even better, thirty thousand years.
What I hadn’t counted on, though, was how attached Jack had become to the pencil. I’d barely scratched the surface of the ground before I realised he was behind me. I turned and looked up at him.
‘Give it to me!’ he hissed, his hand out.
‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s too dangerous. I’m getting rid of it once and for all.’
‘Over my dead body,’ said Jack.
‘If that’s what it takes,’ I said. ‘Though I’m really hoping that won’t be necessary.’
‘Give me one good reason why you have to get rid of it,’ said Jack.
‘One?’ I said. ‘I can give you more than that! A lot of people have been hurt, Jack. And that’s not even counting Penny and Gina’s horses, which are both in the hospital in a very serious condition!’
‘Have you gone completely mad?’ said Jack. ‘Those horses are imaginary! And everything else you’re talking about is pure coincidence! The pencil didn’t make Mr Brainfright fall out the window: he’s perfectly capable of doing that himself, and he’s proved it many times. Fred and Clive fell off that roof because of their own stupidity—it wasn’t the pencil’s fault. I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and I got hit by a bag of money. You were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time and you got hit by a giant cardboard cheque. Gretel’s too strong for her own good, and Jenny was attacked by a lion, not the kitten that she drew. You can’t blame the pencil for any of that!’
Pencil of Doom! Page 5
