Doofus, Dog of Doom

by Emma Laybourn

  Chapter Two

  Nan stared down at the puppy, one eye almost closed in a pirate’s leer. Her wheelchair rocked a little on the lawn of the back garden. Holly could not tell what Nan was thinking, because it was hard for anyone to tell what she thought. Nan wasn’t saying.

  Nan was old. She wasn’t Holly’s grandmother, but her great-grandmother. She was Mum’s gran: she had looked after Mum when Mum was small and her own mother was ill.

  Now, in turn, Mum was looking after Nan. It hadn’t seemed like that, though, until recently. Nan hadn’t needed looking after. She had trotted round the house in an apron and a smile, full of laughter and funny sayings. She had taught Holly how to bake and knit, and told her stories about her own childhood in the second world war, and how she had been evacuated with a gas mask and a label round her neck.

  But Nan had never seemed old until last year, when she had a stroke. One day she was joking as usual: the next morning she was speechless and powerless, unable to withstand gravity. The stroke decided she should sit in a wheelchair and become a watcher, not a speaker or a doer.

  Nan was not content. Bewildered by her new state, she would try to rise out of her wheelchair, stuttering her made-up words that nobody could understand.

  Holly thought a stroke sounded too gentle for what had happened to Nan. A wallop on the head would have been more like it.

  On the other hand, nobody told Nan to snap out of it.

  Now Nan was trying to get out of her wheelchair, speaking in her own unique language which no-one else spoke except perhaps Lily the toddler next door. Nan’s hand was shaking as she raised it to point at the doleful black puppy.

  “Isn’t he sweet?” said Mum. She picked up the puppy, which was limp and unwriggling in her arms. “What shall we call him, Nan?”

  Behind Holly, Matt groaned.

  “Don’t ask her,” he muttered, looking pained and shuffling his too-big feet. Matt was embarrassed by Nan.

  Annoyed with him, Holly jumped up to get Nan’s notebook and pencil and put them on her lap. Nan had been known to draw things that she couldn’t say. She would laboriously draw a flower, or a heart, or a kiss-cross to express her love.

  “Can you think of a name for him, Nan?” asked Mum.

  “Do,” said Nan. “Doo.”

  “Doo?”

  Nan grabbed the pencil and began to draw frantically, jerkily. She did not draw a tick or a heart. She drew a fish.

  “Is it a dolphin?” asked Holly doubtfully. “I don’t think we can call him Dolphin.”

  “It’s a shark,” said Matt. “Look at that fin.”

  Nan crossed out the fish with two vehement stabs of the pen and drew another one. “Do,” she said. “Doo. Dooda.”

  Mum put the puppy down on the grass. “Whew! He’s heavier than you’d think!” He sat immobile, as black as a dog-shaped hole in the ground.

  Nan tore off the page with fumbling fingers and started again. A wobbly house, some stick figures, a bird flying above them, or perhaps a plane.

  “That’s a nice picture, Nan,” said Mum. Nan flung up her hands and pushed the notebook off her knee on to the grass.

  “Doobers,” she said.

  “Doofus,” muttered Matt.

  “Doofus?” said Mum. “You want the new dog to be called Doofus?” The old lady shook her head, then nodded vigorously.

  “What’s a Doofus?” said Holly.

  Matt grinned at her. “It’s an idiot. A numpty.”

  “Like you,” said Holly. She looked at the dog. It obviously ought to be called Shadow, or Midnight. But it didn’t really matter. It could be Tinkerbell, for all she cared. Anything but Pancake.

  “All right,” she said. “I name this dog Doofus.”

  As she spoke, the limp and silent puppy stirred at last. He sat up, pointed his black nose at the sky, took a deep breath: and howled.

  It was a long, long howl, as cold and desolate as winter. It swirled around the garden like a chilly, dreary wind.

  “Good grief!” said Mum.

  “Well, at least it’s alive,” said Matt. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  “I hope it’s not going to do that too often,” remarked Mum. “I thought the girl at the dogs’ home said it never barked?”

  “She didn’t say it never howled.”

  Holly saw a thin, hopeful face appear over the top of the garden fence.

  “Was that a dog I heard?” it asked.

  “No, an elephant,” said Matt.

  “Come over, Clive,” Holly told the face. “Meet our new puppy. He’s called Doofus.”

  Mum wheeled Nan back into the house, while Clive ran down to the end of the garden and squeezed through the gap in the fence that they kept unmended on purpose. He was carrying a large bundle of bare twigs, like a bouquet of long-dead flowers.

  “A dog!” he breathed in admiration. “A real dog!”

  “The only one in the world,” said Matt. “You can pat him for a quid.”

  “Don’t be daft, Matt,” said Holly sharply. To Clive she said, “Go on, give him a pat. He’s very tame.”

  “Hold these,” said Clive. He handed the bouquet of twigs to Holly and squatted down to stroke Doofus lovingly.

  Clive from next door was in Holly’s class at school. Despite being animal-mad, he had never had a dog, and never could have one. His mum had put her foot down.

  Although he had dozens of pets, they were mostly of the small, many-legged or slimy sort that could be collected in the garden. Clive did have a hamster and two goldfish, but anything larger than that was out of the question. No animals were allowed in his house. Even the goldfish had their bowl inside the garden shed.

  Clive was enraptured with Doofus. Doofus wasn’t enraptured at being patted and prodded and having his ears and paws inspected, but he put up with it resignedly.

  “Can I help train him?” begged Clive.

  “You’re welcome,” said Holly. She wasn’t looking forward to training the new puppy. She didn’t want him to sit and beg the way that Pancake used to.

  The thought of Pancake clouded her head again like a ghost, so that she barely heard what Clive was saying.

  “They have Puppy Parties in the village hall – I’ve seen a notice. Help Your Puppy Make Friends And Learn to Socialise. Could we take him to a Puppy Party, do you think?”

  “Aaargh,” said Matt. He strangled himself and toppled over backwards on the grass. Doofus raised his head and gave him a look.

  “All right,” said Holly. “We could go together.” She thought that with a bit of encouragement, Clive might take Doofus over completely. “Can I put these down now?” She held up the bundle of twigs she was still clutching.

  “No! They’ll run away!”

  “They’re sticks,” said Holly.

  “Some of them are sticks,” said Clive. “Some of them are stick insects.”

  “Which ones?”

  “The ones with legs.”

  Holly looked more closely. None of the twigs showed any sign of running away, but some of them did have legs.

  “I bought them off Tom Boyle,” explained Clive, “only I think the shed’s a bit cold for them, that’s why they’re not moving much. I had to break the ice on the goldfish bowl this morning.”

  Cautiously, Holly poked at a stick insect with her finger. It fell off its perch and lay on the path with its legs in the air.

  “It’s dead, Clive.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t kill it. It was dead already.”

  “Bother!” Clive picked up the twiggy corpse and held it regretfully in his palm. “I knew it was too cold in there.”

  “Shall we bury it?” suggested Holly. Pancake was buried under the peonies at the end of the garden. The sunny spot, Pancake’s favourite place to bask.

  Clive shook his head. “No. I think I’ll save it and see how long it takes to rot.”

  Doofus took a slow breath and raised his head. Closing his eyes, he pointed his nose at th
e sky and howled a second time.

  It was even more chilling than the first. For a strange moment Holly felt she was adrift on a wide grey ocean, lost in the sea-fog, alone and freezing.

  “You’ve gone and bought a flipping werewolf,” said Matt, as another stick insect tumbled from the bunch of twigs onto the path. He inspected it. “Died of shock,” he said.

  Mum came hurrying out of the house carrying a bowl of water.

  “That poor dog! We haven’t given it anything to eat or drink! No wonder it’s howling. Here’s some water, Doofus, and you can have some yummy meaty chunks as soon as I’ve opened the tin.” She put the bowl on the ground and hurried back inside.

  Doofus studied the bowl, his dark eyes glistening. He padded over to the water and put his nose to it.

  He did not drink. Instead, with a long, deep sigh, he lay down on top of the bowl.

  “Hey,” said Holly. Doofus ignored her. His black eyes gazed at nothing.

  “An incredibly brainless werewolf,” Matt declared.