The Good, the Bad and the Deadly 7

by Garth Jennings

  CONTENTS

  LOOK AT THE PIGLET

  THIS WICKED BUSINESS

  THE ABOMINATIONS OF MASTER BUZZARD

  NELLY-SON

  THE MESS WE’RE IN

  THE EXTRAORDINARY RESIDENTS OF LONDON ZOO

  A SEAGULL WITH VERY BAD NEWS

  TRUTH AND DUMPLINGS

  MONSTERS IN THE TOILET

  DOODY INVESTIGATES!

  THE STORM INSIDE THE TRAIN

  THE SMELL OF FEAR

  GOOD-LUCK CHARM

  A VERY FROSTY RIVER RACE

  THE CALL OF THE FRUIT BAT

  WHAT TO PACK WHEN YOU ARE OFF TO SAVE THE WORLD

  FRIENDS REUNITED

  SURLY KAREN AND THE SIN EXTRACTOR

  BIG HEAD BIRD BRAIN

  BLOOD IN THE CATHEDRAL

  PARIS SMASH

  THE HAUNTED RHINO

  FRINTON-ON-SEA

  THE CRASHING CLOUDS

  THE BATTLE ON THE BEACH

  ARE YOU AWAKE?

  THE LAND OF EYES

  AIR FORCE

  THE MERCY OF THE SEA

  THE RACE TO THE VOLCANO

  BUZZARD’S CHOICE

  BROKEN MONSTERS

  HOSPITAL FOOD

  WHERE IS NELSON?

  YOUR GOOD HEALTH

  NICE TO MEET YOU

  For Leo

  LOOK AT THE PIGLET

  You’re just in time.

  I’m afraid life is about to take a terrible turn for twelve-year-old Nelson Green. Well, the good times had to come to an end sooner or later, didn’t they? Having spent a glorious summer goofing around North East London with seven knee-high monsters invisible to everyone but him, Nelson and his monster friends are now being separated by forces beyond their control. And, as if that weren’t enough, they are about to face a creature who threatens to end all life on earth by Monday morning at the latest. I strongly suggest you take a good, long look at this drawing of a piglet in pyjamas, as it will be the last time you see or read about anything nice for a while.

  Having enjoyed the piglet, I hope you are now feeling prepared to plunge back into the story, but before I can reveal what has become of Nelson and his monsters, I must take you back to the time this story truly began. And like so many incredible stories, this one begins in the dark.

  THIS WICKED BUSINESS

  LONDON. 1667. WAY PAST BEDTIME . . .

  ‘Father . . . Father, wake up . . . Wake up,’ whispered Jane, but Sir Christopher Wren (the world-famous architect, mathematician, scientist, astronomer, inventor, and wearer of huge curly wigs) continued to snore like a donkey. It was the fifth night in a row that he had fallen asleep at his desk while trying to redesign the handrail for the Whispering Gallery of St Paul’s Cathedral. Not that you could see his designs in the smoke-flavoured darkness of his study, or anything else for that matter. The candles had burned out hours ago, and the fire that had been keeping him warm was nothing but rustling ash now. The only light came from the little candle that Jane was holding in front of her.

  ‘Father . . . Father . . . Wake up,’ Jane whispered again, but it wasn’t until she gently prodded the end of his long nose that the snoring stopped and his eyes fluttered open.

  ‘Ahh . . . hello, Jane,’ mumbled Sir Christopher, and he smiled at the sight of his daughter’s heart-shaped face in the candlelight.

  ‘Should I let him in, Father?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Let who in, my darling?’

  ‘The man.’

  ‘What man?’

  Jane replied by pointing to the window behind her father where a ghostly pale face was staring at them both through the glass.

  ‘Waah!’ yelped Sir Christopher as he jumped out of his chair, sending his paperwork scattering all over the place and his telescope crashing to the floor.

  Jane raised her candle to the window for a better look at the fellow.

  Underneath a hood made of sackcloth, Jane’s candle illuminated a hairless and wrinkled man’s face decorated with two baggy, bloodshot eyes and a nose that had been squashed flat in his youth by a kick from a startled horse.

  It might sound creepy to you, but this squashy face actually belonged to a good soul, and the goodness shone through his smile.

  Sir Christopher let out a loud sigh of relief and gently moved Jane to one side in order to open the window. ‘Nothing to be frightened of, Jane. It is just my horseman, Bailey,’ said Sir Christopher, although it was clear Jane wasn’t in the least bit frightened.

  ‘Bailey. It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘Forgive me, my lord,’ said Bailey, who sounded like a breathless toad. ‘But there is proper trouble brewin’ up at St Paul’s.’

  ‘Oh, not the stone thieves again,’ groaned Sir Christopher while resetting his telescope on its tripod.

  ‘No, my lord. Not thieves. ’Tis Master Buzzard.’

  ‘Master Buzzard? Oh, what has that overfed buffoon done now?’

  ‘’Tis not what Master Buzzard has done, my lord,’ said Bailey pulling himself up so that his face was leaning in through the open window. ’Tis what he is a-plannin’ to do with . . . with the extractor.’

  ‘The extractor?’

  ‘Yes, my lord. The extractor.’

  ‘Well, he’s wasting his time with the extractor – it doesn’t work.’

  ‘But, my lord, I fear Master Buzzard may have found a way to make it work.’ Bailey bowed his head a little as if this were very grave news, and judging by the stunned look on Sir Christopher’s face, it was.

  ‘What’s an extractor?’ interrupted Jane eagerly, but Sir Christopher did not look keen to answer her.

  ‘Uh . . . just a device I . . . I should have never bothered with.’

  ‘Why? What does it do?’

  ‘What does it do? Oh . . . well, one day I will answer that question, but right now I must go to the cathedral and make sure that colossal dunderhead Master Buzzard doesn’t do anything with it.’ Sir Christopher bent over to fasten the buckles on his chunky high-heeled shoes, which, along with extremely big wigs, were the height of men’s fashion at that time.

  ‘Dunderhead’ was just one of the many words Jane had heard her father use when describing his apprentice, Master Buzzard. She had also heard her father use words like ‘buffoon’ and ‘dimwit’ and ‘nincompoop’ quite a lot too, and it was clear that if Master Buzzard had not been the son of a very powerful and wealthy duke, there was no way he would still be her father’s apprentice.

  ‘I shall fetch our coats, Father,’ said Jane, as if they had just been invited to an exciting party.

  ‘Coats? No, no, no. Jane, you are to stay here and go back to bed.’

  ‘But I could help you.’

  ‘Jane, you will have no part in this wicked business—’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ snapped Sir Christopher.

  ‘Then why are you going?’

  ‘Because . . . Please . . . just . . . just go back to bed. And in the morning we’ll have more of that lovely raspberry jam we made together. I shall collect fresh bread on my way home. I promise.’ Sir Christopher kissed the top of her head before adjusting his enormous wig in the mirror and rushing out into the hallway where he knocked over several walking sticks and a pot that had been catching rain from a leak in the roof.

  ‘Raspberry jam? I don’t care about raspberry jam – I want to come with you!’ she called out, but it was too late. Jane could hear her father’s silly shoes clattering across the courtyard and his grunts of effort as he struggled to open the rusty bolt on the back gate. She turned to look out of the window and saw Bailey climbing into the front seat of a stagecoach ready to be pulled by two ea
ger white horses. Jane reached out as if to close the window, but she didn’t. She didn’t turn to go back up to bed either. Instead, she opened the window wider, blew out her candle and vanished into the darkness.

  The stagecoach hurtled through the narrow streets of London. There was so much clattering and shouting and thundering of hooves that neither Sir Christopher Wren nor his driver Bailey heard Jane giggling below inside the carriage.

  How did Jane get inside the carriage? Well, in those few chaotic seconds while her father had been wrestling with the back gate, Jane had climbed out of her father’s study window and snuck aboard. There was no way someone as curious as Jane could have gone to bed without finding out what this thing called an ‘extractor’ was capable of doing, and – even more intriguing – why the ‘dunderhead’ called Master Buzzard would go to such lengths to test it in the middle of the night.

  THE ABOMINATIONS OF MASTER BUZZARD

  Jane hid inside the carriage until the stagecoach had stopped moving and she was sure her father and his driver Bailey were some distance away. When at last she dared to peep out of the window, Jane could clearly see the moonlit silhouette of what was to be her father’s most famous contribution to London’s skyline: St Paul’s Cathedral. It was a breathtaking sight despite being far from finished and surrounded by all the muck and mess you would expect to find on such a vast building site.

  Silk slippers were not made for scrambling over great piles of rock and stone, but Jane was too concerned with finding out what was going on inside the cathedral to care. Gusts of icy wind rushed up from the River Thames and whirled around Jane as if to say, ‘Turn around, Jane! Go back! Go back!’ But the wind was wasting its breath.

  Meanwhile, Sir Christopher and Bailey had reached the top of the stairs to the first floor of the cathedral, each carrying an oil lamp. Though both of them panted like dogs, they didn’t stop running until they had burst through the door of the laboratory to find the man responsible for tonight’s hoo-ha. (I know that many of you will not be familiar with the term ‘hoo-ha’ because it is a very old-fashioned way of describing a big fuss. However, I like ‘hoo-ha’, and I’m determined to bring it back into everyday use along with some other classics like ‘shiver me timbers’ and ‘I should coco’.)

  BANG! went the door as it hit the wall.

  ‘Master Buzzard! What in the name of Sweet Hosanna do you think you are doing?!’ blurted Sir Christopher between great gulps of air.

  A man who looked like an oversized chubby baby, dressed in the fanciest clothes money could buy, turned to look at him with surprise on his powdered white face. This was William James Henry William Layton Buzzard (yes, his parents actually named him William twice). He was the dimwit, the numbskull, the overfed buffoon that had been such a troublesome apprentice to Sir Christopher.

  William James Henry William Layton Buzzard

  You certainly won’t recognize the two hooded thugs he had paid to protect him, or the artist he had paid to paint his portrait, but some of you might recognize the table they are all standing next to. This is the sin extractor.

  The two thugs rushed across the room and pinned Bailey and Sir Christopher to the wall.

  ‘Let go of us at once!’ barked Sir Christopher. ‘This is my office! You have no right to be here!’

  ‘Hush now, hush now,’ said Master Buzzard, touching the tip of his finger to his puffy top lip. ‘Can’t you see? I am having my portrait painted and I cannot move from this elegant pose until Robert has captured me at my best and most heroic.’

  Robert the painter was as thin and shrivelled as a waterlogged finger and wore an equally wrinkly leather apron. On his canvas, Sir Christopher could see the beginnings of a flattering portrait, including the sin extractor.

  ‘This is neither the time nor the place to have your ghastly image painted. Now get out!’ Sir Christopher’s rage made everyone in the room, including the thugs, jump.

  ‘I have more than enough to be going with, Master Buzzard,’ muttered Robert the painter, and with one swift movement, he grabbed the easel, portrait and brushes and headed for the door.

  Buzzard called out after him. ‘Oh very good, Robert. And don’t forget – you are not only capturing my noble appearance, but also the moment I, William Buzzard, made history.’

  ‘You? Make history? HA! You know very well I have tested this device twenty times, even on Bailey, and it did nothing more than give him a nasty rash,’ said Sir Christopher.

  Bailey nodded emphatically. ‘It did, my lord! A terrible rash it was too. All over me backside. I was scratching me bottom day and night.’

  ‘Well, I am the reason it never worked,’ said Buzzard proudly. ‘Because I had always disconnected it here.’ Buzzard crouched and pointed to the copper wires dangling beneath the table.

  ‘You see, sir,’ said Master Buzzard with a grin, ‘I am not just a pretty face.’

  ‘How dare you meddle with my work!’ hissed Sir Christopher through gritted teeth, but this only made the thugs tighten their grip on him.

  ‘Well, one must be creative if one wants to make a name for oneself.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a name “one” wants, is it? Well I have plenty of names for you!’

  Master Buzzard’s babyish demeanour was replaced by a horrid little snarl that made his right nostril flare wide enough to fit a grape inside it. (Please don’t try fitting a grape up your nose. It will end in tears.)

  ‘Yes . . . I have heard the names you call me behind my back. What? You think I didn’t hear you? Well, I believe some of those names may suit you now, sir!’

  Buzzard took off his shoes to reveal stockinged feet.

  ‘When his Majesty King George learns what I have done tonight – that it was I, William Buzzard, who created a machine that can cleanse even the most wicked souls of evil – he will reward me with riches beyond my wildest dreams. My portrait shall hang beside the great and the good. I shall be famous throughout the empire. Throughout time! Now, please remain silent while I carry out the extraction, or I will have my men break both your noses.’

  Sir Christopher felt the thug tighten his grip and decided to do as he was told. The extractor creaked as Master Buzzard heaved his great buttocks on to the edge of the table, then he closed his eyes and gently rolled his body backwards. Buzzard gasped, wide-eyed with surprise as the thousands of tiny silver needles pierced the skin on his back. You would have expected him to scream, but instead he appeared to slowly relax as if he were settling on to a soft mattress.

  There was a loud hissssssss like a punctured bicycle tyre, and the extractor table began to vibrate. Beneath the table, the seven copper test tubes rattled. Whatever was being extracted from Master Buzzard was being collected in these seven tubes, steam rising from each one until they were all whistling like eager little trains.

  I order you to stop this at once! is what Sir Christopher should have said, but his curiosity, that great fizzing part of his brain that wanted to understand and unravel all the mysteries of the universe, smothered his common sense in a blanket of questions. Was his vain and stupid apprentice really about to make his sin extractor work? Could the human soul be cleansed of all wickedness? Is it really possible to separate the good from the bad in a human being?

  The hissing and rattling noises made by the sin extractor were gradually accompanied by another sound. It was a deep rumbling, like distant thunder, coming from somewhere else in the cathedral. None of the men in the laboratory had any idea what was making this sound, but Jane did.

  She was crouched behind the door to her father’s laboratory and had been peering through the keyhole when hundreds and hundreds of rats emerged from the walls and under the doors until the floor was just a river of oily black fur. As you know, Jane is not the kind to be easily frightened – but rats? Jane loathed rats, which is why she leaped on top of a wooden crate. She needn’t have worried though. None of those rats were interested in Jane. They were only concerned with getting out of St Paul’s and away fro
m the extractor as quickly as possible. And you are about to find out why.

  Master Buzzard sprang up into the air as if the sin extractor had suddenly been charged with electricity.

  ‘Aaaargh!’ he screamed, and he staggered across the room before crumpling to the floor. At the very same time, the seven copper vials beneath the table toppled to the floor.

  Outside the laboratory door, as rats scattered away across the floor, Jane jumped down from the crate to peer back through the keyhole.

  Master Buzzard appeared to be as delighted as he was breathless.

  ‘Oh my! For a moment there, I felt such bliss. Pure, golden bliss. I had a memory from my youth. No, it was more than just a memory. I was really there. Yes, I sat upon my mother’s knee as she fed me cake and told me what a beautiful boy I was and that I would grow up to be famous,’ he said breathlessly, although no one else in the room could see anything but Buzzard grinning like a fool.

  ‘He’s gone off his rocker, my lord,’ whispered Bailey.

  ‘He was never on his rocker in the first place,’ said Sir Christopher.

  ‘What’s this? Monsters?’ whispered Master Buzzard. The happiness he had been feeling had vanished and he now wore the expression of a giant frightened baby.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. There are no cakes and there are no monsters. Guards! Thugs! Whatever you are! Get this ignoramus back to his home before he starts to see dancing fairies or singing sprites,’ commanded Sir Christopher, and the hooded guards nodded eagerly in agreement. They may have been thugs, but they were smart enough to know when to switch to the winning team.

  ‘Monsters!’ screamed Master Buzzard.

  Jane found his cry so chilling that her stomach seemed to shrink to the size of a walnut.

  ‘Look! On the floor! There! Argh! Get them away from me! Please! Get them away from me,’ panted Buzzard. He grabbed the nearest thing to him, which was a bucket of ash beside the fire, and hurled it towards the middle of the room. It clattered on the stone floor and filled the air with a cloud of ash.