by Emma Fischel
The prongs must have hit a sensitive spot, because it yowled, and stopped dead.
I wasn’t expecting that.
Which was why I lost my grip on its antlers. And why I went hurtling straight over its head. And hurtling down…
Into my trap.
* * *
I’ll never forget it. Even when I’m sitting in a rocking chair with grey hair and no teeth, I’ll never forget it.
The huge furry head looking over the side of my trap, eyes bulging like shiny black cannonballs…
The bony legs reaching in and lifting me out as if I weighed no more than a bag of sugar…
The tin of baked beans that came shooting out of nowhere and clanged off the moth monster‘s head…
And Lily and Mo, pounding through the shadows in the garden, armed with their shopping bags.
‘Get off my brother!’ Mo yelled at the moth monster, leaping the garden gate. Then she charged right up to it and squirted in both eyes with the whipped cream.
Lily was cracking plates over its head. The moth monster ducked and dodged and hissed and shrieked.
But it wasn’t enough. I knew it wasn’t.
The shopping bags would soon be empty. And what then?
Only a miracle could help us now.
And we got one.
BOOM!
There was a flash of light, and the bristling thing came scuttling down the garden and under the gate. Clattering its teeth, nipping at the moth monster’s legs and shooting out tiny little angry flames.
But that wasn’t the miracle. Oh no. Because…
BOOM!
There was a another flash of light, and another bristling thing appeared. But this was a much bigger bristling thing. Much, MUCH bigger. Big as a building, looming out of the garden.
The big bristling miracle flattened the gate completely under one gigantic paw. A sheet of flames came blasting out of its enormous piggy nostrils. There was a burning singeing smell, as the moth monster started scrabbling to put out the flames on its antlers.
It cowered as the gigantic miracle lumbered towards it.
All of a sudden, the moth monster – which looked so big a few moments ago – looked tiny. Tiny and totally terrified.
It started flapping its wings, fast as it could. Then it took off, and swooped over the squashed gate and the bristling miracle thing. It swerved across the garden, straight towards the huddle of trees. And…
BOOM!
There was a flash of light, dazzling as lightning. A glimpse of a vast sizzling circle hovering in the air.
And the moth monster was gone.
Chapter Thirteen
The Gorgle
The moth monster must have got Mum with its squirters. We found her standing next to the compost heap, still as a statue, arm outstretched, holding a bucket of vegetable peelings, and dripping green foam.
It took three hours before Mum gave a blink and opened her eyes. And it took a lot more hours before she gave up trying to work out what had happened to her.
But we didn’t tell. No point.
Besides, Mum would never EVER live in Gulliver House if she knew there was some kind of monster tunnel in the garden.
And, well…
Seeing the spring sunlight in the garden, all the little flowers poking up… Hearing Oliver galloping about in his paddock doing monster impressions for baby Arthur in his pram… Knowing a bristling thing the size of a large dinosaur is now my friend, and may pop back through the tunnel to say hello…
Well, with all that, I didn’t want to leave Gulliver House.
Not any more.
As for the PPs... did they thank me for quite possibly saving their lives?
No. They sat on me.
The day after it was all over, they came barging into the fifth room – where I was busy practising my lassooing skills on Wolfgang – clutching their Twin Club badges.
I thought they were about to sob with gratitude. Tell me how lucky they were to have the bravest brother in the world. Vow to burn their Twin Club badges on the bonfire Mum had just got going up near the enormous patch of mud she calls the vegetable garden.
I was wrong.
The pair of them flattened me. They forced me down on to the rug, and both sat on me.
‘Do the hero thing EVER again…’ Lily said, curls bobbing, eyes glittering, and brandishing her Twin Club badge. ‘And these go back on. Forever.’
‘We so totally do NOT appreciate being locked in a kitchen while you have all the fun,’ screeched Mo, blue eyes glaring, bracelets jangling, and fingernails pinching a really soft bit of my arm. ‘And I had a perfectly good plan. Which – by the way – if you had also filled a shopping bag instead of deciding you were going to hog the whole monster fight to yourself, MIGHT have worked.’
Then they both started pummelling me, so I squished deeper into the rug…
And I felt two shapes, like hinges, digging into my back.
That’s how we found it. A trapdoor under the rug. The way in to the secret room.
A panic room, that’s what me and the PPs reckon it was. A room to hide in, in case of large or particularly vicious monsters. You flung open the trapdoor in the fifth room, hurtled down the steps, along a short corridor, up some more steps, through another trapdoor and into the secret room. The panic room. Safety.
It had supplies of tinned food, a toilet, everything you’d need. And something else…
A sketchbook. A big book full of drawings, belonging to Darwin Gulliver. Page after page of strange creatures. All with names. All with notes about them.
And on page 47, there it was. The moth monster. Shrieking and staring out of the page. With a name…
GORGLE
it said.
* * *
It’s been three weeks now, and nothing horrible has come out of the monster tunnel.
Maybe something will. Maybe not. Who knows?
Because if the Gorgle is real – well, I expect all the others are too.
But I know one thing for sure.
Whatever comes through the monster tunnel, this time I won’t be alone. Because me and the PPs – we’re a team. And we’ll be ready.
I hope.
Copyright © 2012 A & C Black
This electronic edition published in November 2012
First published 2012 by
A & C Black
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP
www.acblack.com
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.
eISBN: 978-1-4081-8099-0
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