Paul Jenning's Spookiest Stories

by Paul Jennings

  I looked at the shoe; it was all twisted and old. It had been buried in the sand dunes for a long time. I wondered whose it was. Then I noticed something – two initials were carved into the bottom. I could just read them. They were ‘B.B.’

  ‘Ben Byron,’ I shouted. ‘The bones belong to my great great grandfather without a shirt.’

  I suddenly thought of something – Ben Byron’s shoe had reminded me. Tomorrow was Wednesday; I had to give my history talk at school. I groaned. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep worrying about it. And the more I worried the more nervous I would get. The more nervous I got the worse I would feel. The last time I gave a talk at school I got one out of ten. One out of ten. You couldn’t get much lower than that.

  Then I had an idea – I would take along the shoe. I would tell everyone I had found Ben Byron’s shoe. That would make it interesting. I might even get three out of ten for my talk if I had the shoe. I put the shoe in my sock drawer and took the bag of bones out of the cupboard. I wanted to have a closer look at them.

  I tipped the bones out into a pile on the floor. There were three long bones and a lot of small ones. The sad, lonely feeling came over me once more. I sat down on the bed and looked at the pile of sad bones. Then something happened that gave me a shock. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing – the bones were moving. They were slowly moving around the floor. The bones were creeping around each other like a pile of snakes.

  The bones sorted themselves out. They all fitted together. They formed themselves into a foot and a leg. All the bones were in the right order. I had the skeleton of Ben Byron’s leg.

  The leg didn’t move. It just lay there on the floor. I sat on the bed looking at it for a long time. I can tell you I was scared – very scared. But I couldn’t just leave the leg there; Mum might come in and see it. Anyway, it was creepy having the skeleton of someone’s leg lying on your bedroom floor. In the end I jumped up and swept all of the bones back into the bag and threw it into the corner of the room. Then I climbed into bed and put my head under the blanket. I tried to pretend that the bones weren’t there.

  7

  The next day I had to give my talk at school. It went worse than I thought. It was terrible. I stood in front of the class for ages without saying anything; I was so scared that my knees were knocking. The words just wouldn’t come out. ‘What’s up,’ said Sue Featherstone. ‘Haven’t you got any shirts today?’ A big laugh went up.

  I managed to read the whole thing through to the end. I tried not to say anything else. I could feel it building up inside me – it was like a bomb waiting to go off. I kept my mouth closed tight but the words were trying to get out. My cheeks blew out and my face went red. ‘Look at him,’ laughed Sue Featherstone. ‘He’s trying not to say it.’

  It was no good. The words exploded out. ‘Without a shirt.’

  I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do. I grabbed the shoe. ‘This is Ben Byron’s shoe,’ I said. ‘It was washed ashore without a shirt.’

  ‘It is not,’ said Sue Featherstone. ‘It’s an old shoe that you found at the tip.’

  Everything was going wrong. I would probably get nought out of ten for this talk. Then something happened that changed everything. A feeling of sadness swept over me. Everyone in the room felt it – they all felt sad. Then someone screamed. It was the leg – it was standing there at the door. It hopped across the room. My hands were shaking so much that I dropped the shoe. The leg hopped across the platform and into the shoe. It wanted the shoe.

  Sue Featherstone looked at the skeleton leg and started shouting out, ‘Get rid of it. Get rid of the horrible thing.’

  The leg started hopping towards her. It hopped right up onto her desk. She screamed and screamed. Then she ran for the door. Everyone else had the same idea – they all ran for the door at the same time. There was a lot of yelling and pushing. They were all trying to get out of the door at once. They were scared out of their wits.

  The leg bones chased the whole class across the playground and down the street. I have never heard so much yelling and screaming in all my life.

  I was left alone in the classroom with Mr Bush. He just sat there shaking his head. After a while he said, ‘I don’t know how you did it, Brian. But it was a good trick. I give you ten out of ten for that talk. Ten out of ten.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Bush without a shirt,’ I said.

  8

  When I got home from school the leg was waiting for me. It was just standing there in the corner of my room; it didn’t move at all. But it was so sad and it made me sad. I felt as if I were a skeleton myself. I felt as if my bones were being washed away by the waves, as if they were being scattered along a long, sandy beach. I knew that this was what had happened to Ben Byron. His bones had been washed up and scattered along Lady Bay Beach.

  I looked at Shovel. ‘We have to find the rest of the bones,’ I said. ‘This leg will never have peace until all the bones are together again. We have to find the rest of the bones and we have to find them now without a shirt.’

  I took a spade and a sack and walked towards the beach. Shovel came with me and so did the leg. It hopped slowly behind us making a plopping sound as it came. It still had the shoe on. It was lucky that there was no one on the beach – they wouldn’t have believed their eyes if they had seen a boy, a dog and a skeleton leg walking along the beach. I could hardly believe it myself.

  I didn’t know where to start looking. But the leg did. It hopped across the beach and stood still where it wanted us to dig. We spent all afternoon following the leg around and digging holes. In every hole we found some bones. I went as fast as I could; I wanted to get rid of the sad feeling. Tears were running down my face because I was so unhappy. Every time I found some more bones I put them in the sack. The bones were glad to be together; I could tell that. But they were still sad. They would not be happy until I found the last one.

  After a long time I found the last bone. It was the skull. It was in a hole with an old shirt – a very old shirt. I had never seen one like it before. I put the skull and the shirt in the sack. Then I held open the top. The leg hopped into the sack with the other bones.

  9

  The feeling of sadness went as soon as the leg joined the other bones. The bones were happy, I was happy and so was Shovel.

  ‘Now,’ I said to Shovel. ‘We have a job to do. We have to bury all the bones in the same hole without a shirt.’

  I carried the bag of happy bones to a lonely place in the sand dunes, and Shovel and I started to dig a hole. We worked at it for hours and hours. At last it was deep enough. I took the bag of bones and tipped them into the grave. They fell into a pile at the bottom; then they started to move. They slithered around at the bottom of the hole. I should have felt scared but I didn’t. I knew what was happening. The bones were joining up into a skeleton. After a while it was finished. The skeleton was whole. It lay still at the bottom of the grave looking up at me. It didn’t look as if it was at peace. There was something else – it wanted something else. I looked in the sack. The shirt was still there.

  I threw the shirt into the hole. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I won’t bury you without a shirt.’

  The bones started to move for the last time. The skeleton moved onto its side with the shirt under its head. It was in a sleeping position. It was very happy. Music seemed to come up out of the grave – silent music. I could hear it inside my head.

  We filled in the grave and smoothed down the sand. I decided to say a few words; after all, it was a sort of a funeral. I looked out to sea. I could feel tears in my eyes. This is what I said: ‘Here lie the bones of Ben Byron. At peace at last. Beside this beautiful bay.’

  Shovel looked up at me. He seemed to be smiling.

  ‘Hey,’ I yelled, ‘I didn’t mention a shirt. I didn’t say it.’

  And I never did again.

  All right. So you want to hear the story of the ghost on the dunny. Ever
ybody wants to know about it, so I am going to tell it for the last time. I will put it on this tape recording.

  Someone else can write it down. My spelling is not too good. And anyway, I haven’t got the time for a lot of writing.

  I am giving you a warning: this is not a polite story. If your feelings get hurt it will be your own fault. I call a spade a spade. And I call a dunny a dunny.

  If you live in Australia, you know what a dunny is. It is a toilet. A lavatory. Other names for it are throne, loo, WC, jerry, and thunderbox. I have heard it called other things, but I won’t mention them here. I am not a rude person; I just get to the point.

  Some dunnies are outside. An outside dunny is usually at the bottom of the garden, a long way from the house. If it rains you get wet. If it is night time you have to get a torch and go there in the dark. When you have finished you have to pull a chain to make it flush. There are no buttons or anything flash like that.

  2

  Anyway, I must get back to the story. It all started when I was fourteen years old. My parents died in a car accident and I went to live with my Aunty Flo. She lived in the country, at Timboon.

  I was pretty broken up – miserable, in fact. One minute I was as happy as Larry, with a mother and a father, living in a big house in the city. The next minute I was with Aunty Flo in the bush.

  Aunty Flo was nice. It wasn’t her fault; I just felt low because of what happened. That sort of thing is very hard to take.

  My new home was very old. It was a big wooden house with a verandah all around it. It had a tin roof; you could hear the rain falling on it at night.

  Inside the house it was very dark. Gloomy. Every doorway had wooden beads hanging down on strings. There were old photos all over the walls, pictures of glum men staring down at you. In the hall was a tall clock, a grandfather clock. It ticked loudly. The house was so quiet that you could hear the ticking in every room. For some reason you always felt like whispering. It was like a library.

  School had finished; it was the holidays. There wasn’t much to do. I didn’t know anybody in the town, so most days I went hunting rabbits. Or snakes.

  Aunty Flo was very good to me. She liked me. ‘Bob,’ she would say, ‘you need fattening up.’ She made jam tarts and little cakes with icing, and set them up on the table with neat napkins. She was a very good cook, and very old. She didn’t know much about boys. She let me go wherever I liked. She only had one rule. ‘Be home for tea on time.’

  I liked Aunty Flo. But I didn’t like her outside dunny.

  3

  One day Aunty Flo took me aside. She was waving a bit of paper and she looked very serious. ‘It is very sad about your parents, Bob,’ she said. ‘I am worried about your future. If I die there will be no one to look after you.’

  She was a good-hearted old girl. A tear ran down her face. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I have made some plans. This is my will. It tells what will happen to my things if I die. I have left everything to you. If I die you will get the lot: the house and my money.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I looked at my shoes. She kept talking with tears in her eyes. ‘The only thing you won’t get is a painting I used to have. You can’t have it because it is gone. Stolen. It was in my family for a long time. It was worth a lot of money – very valuable. It was a painting of this house. I wanted you to have it.’

  I pretended not to notice her tears. ‘Who stole it, Aunty?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘I went away to England for two years. A man called Old Ned lived in the house and looked after everything for me. But when I came back he was dead, and the painting was gone.’

  I asked Aunty Flo how Ned died. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I found him on the toilet at the bottom of the garden. He had been there for a year. There wasn’t much left of him – just a skeleton, sitting on the toilet.’

  4

  Well, that was nice. That was very nice. Now I had to go and sit in an outside dunny where someone had died.

  I didn’t like going to that loo at the best of times. You had to walk down a long path, overgrown with weeds. Trees stuck out and scratched your face. When you got inside it was very dark – there was no light globe. There were cobwebs. And no toilet paper, just a nail on the wall with newspaper hanging on it. It wasn’t even worth reading the paper. It was only The Age. Very boring.

  Those cobwebs had me worried too. There could be spiders – redback spiders. Redbacks are poisonous. I knew that song about redbacks on the toilet seat. It wasn’t funny when your pants were down, I can tell you that.

  Redbacks, cobwebs, stories about skeletons and no one around. I didn’t like sitting there with the door closed, especially at night. At night it was creepy.

  One day I was in the dunny paying a visit. There wasn’t much to do. I started counting holes in the wall. A lot of knots had fallen out of the wood. They were little round holes that let in a bit of light. I had counted up to hole number twenty when I saw something that made my hair stand on end.

  An eye was looking at me. Staring at me through the hole.

  It was not just any old eye. I could see right through it. I could see the trees on the other side of it. It was not a human eye.

  I pulled up my pants fast. No one has ever pulled up their pants that fast before. I ran up that path and back to the house like greased lightning.

  I told Aunty Flo about it, but she didn’t believe me. ‘Rubbish,’ she said. ‘There is nothing down there. It’s just your imagination.’

  5

  You can imagine how I felt. Very nice. Very nice indeed, I don’t think. I was not going down there again. No way. Just think how you would feel at the bottom of the garden, in the dark, sitting on a dunny where someone had died. Not only died, but turned into a skeleton. Then there were cobwebs, redback spiders and eyes. Eyes looking at you through holes in the walls.

  I made up my mind. I wasn’t going down there again. Ever.

  I didn’t go there for a week. Then I started feeling a bit crook. I felt terrible. ‘You’re not looking well,’ said Aunty Flo. ‘You’ve not been regular, have you, dear? You’d better have some medicine.’

  The medicine fixed me up all right. I got the runs. I spent most of the day sitting down there. But what I was really worried about were the nights.

  Sure enough it happened: I had to go to the loo in the night. I took a torch and went slowly down the dark path. The trees were rustling and something seemed to be moaning. I told myself that it was a bird. I hoped that it was a bird. It had to be a bird.

  At last I reached the dunny. I went inside, shut the door, and locked it. I had no sooner sat down than something terrible happened. The torch slowly went out. The batteries were flat – as flat as a tack.

  I think I should tell you what happens to me when I get scared. My teeth start to chatter. They go clickety click. Very loudly.

  So there I was, sitting in the dark with my teeth chattering. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. You must have been able to hear the noise a mile away.

  I started to think about creepy things. Eyes. Bats. Vampires. Murderers. I was scared to death. I wanted to get out of there. My teeth were chattering louder and louder.

  Then the moon came out. Moonbeams shone through the space on top of the door. I felt a bit better – but only for a second. I looked up and my heart froze. A face was looking at me. An old man’s face. He had a beard and was wearing an old hat. He just stood there staring at me over the top of the door. And even worse, much worse, the moon was shining right through him. I could see through him. He didn’t block out the moonlight at all.

  6

  I couldn’t get out. The old man was on the other side of the door. I was trapped. I started screaming out, ‘Aunty Flo, Aunty Flo. Help! Help! A ghost!’

  The face looked startled. Then it disappeared. I didn’t waste any time – I kicked open the door and ran out. But fell flat on my face. I had forgotten to pull my pants up.

  When I
finally pulled up my pants the ghost had gone. I tore up the path screaming out for Aunty Flo.

  Aunty Flo didn’t believe me. She knew I was scared. But she didn’t believe there was a ghost. ‘Nonsense,’ she said, ‘there are no such things as ghosts. I have been going down there for sixty years, and I have never seen one.’

  I tried to make the best of it. I smiled. A weak smile, but a smile. Aunty Flo did not smile back. She was staring at me. Her mouth was hanging open. ‘Bob,’ she shouted. ‘Bob. One of your teeth is missing. One of your beautiful teeth.’

  I put my hand up to my mouth. Sure enough a front tooth was gone – broken clean off. I knew what had happened. My teeth had chattered so hard that the tooth had broken. That ghost had done it, now. I was starting to get mad with that ghost.

  Aunty Flo was upset. ‘You must have done it when you fell over,’ she said. She put some new batteries in the torch. Then we went to look for the tooth. There was no sign of it. There was no sign of the ghost either.

  The next day we went to the dentist. He had bad news for me. ‘You’ll have to have a plate,’ he said. ‘The tooth is gone and the piece that is left is split.’

  ‘What’s a plate?’ I asked.

  ‘Like false teeth,’ he told me. ‘But you will only have one tooth that is false. And you will have to look after it. They cost a lot of money, so don’t lose it. Clean it every night and put it in water when you go to bed. And don’t break it by biting string or hard objects.’

  The plate cost two hundred dollars. Can you believe that? Two hundred dollars. Aunty Flo had to pay up. It was a lot of money. She made sure I looked after that tooth. I had to clean it every night and every morning. She checked on it when I was in bed. Every night she looked at the tooth in the glass of water. If the plate wasn’t clean she made me do it again. She wouldn’t let me take it out of my mouth in the day. She thought I might lose it.