by Louis Catt
I poured out the tea, shoved in a big spoonful of sugar, and got out of the door as fast as I could before anyone asked me any awkward questions.
Upstairs, Fliss was much better. She was wrapped up in my duvet, and Lyndz was fussing round her in just the way Fliss likes best. She drank the tea, and her face went back to its normal colour.
“It’s a good thing we didn’t have time to make a body!” Frankie said cheerfully. “Fliss would have had a hundred fits then!”
“Mum says I’m very sensitive,” Fliss said, sounding really pleased about it. Then she shivered again. “The blood did look real, though!”
“I never got a chance to see it properly,” Rosie said in a disappointed voice, and that made us all laugh.
There was a knock on the door. “Kitchen’s clear!” Dad said, and we heard him stomping off into my parent’s room. I guessed he was going to get ready for his meeting.
“I say it’s food time!” shouted Lyndz. “Can I go down and put my pizza in the oven first? You lot stay up here for two minutes – I don’t want anyone seeing it until it’s ready!”
We counted one hundred and twenty hippopotamuses to give Lyndz time to sort out her pizza, and then we couldn’t wait any longer. We rushed downstairs to sort out our ghoulish grub. Fliss still seemed to be suffering from shock, and she jumped a mile when Rosie dropped a spoon. I wished she’d get back to normal soon. I was feeling a little guilty that we’d scared her half to death!
When Lyndz finally pulled the pizza out of the oven we all gasped again. Usually Frankie is the one who makes pizzas – her dad is famous for them – and Lyndz’s pizza wasn’t fab in the way Frankie’s are. But it was fabulously gross. For a start it was green – a muddy, been buried for ages sort of green. It was folded over in half, so the two edges looked a bit like horrible ghoulish lips… and there were fingers sticking out! Horrible, drooping, floppy, shiny pink fingers, with oozy blood dribbling out between each of them. (Actually they were sausages, but they really looked like fingers.)
We all shouted yuck! together – it was so brilliant!
We carried all the food upstairs; during sleepovers, we always eat our food in the bedroom – it’s much more fun. The green slime wibbled and wobbled like mad; I’d filled the bowl rather full, but we just about managed not to spill it. At least, not much of it – a little slimed its way out when Rosie tried to open the door with one hand and hold the bowl with the other. It looked as if a large slug had been trying to ooze its way into Emma’s room!
We put the food on the floor, snuggled into our sleeping bags and turned the lights off. Then we pulled out our torches. Have you ever eaten like that? It’s awesome! Although you don’t always see when things get spilt.
“Let’s put our horror tape on!” Frankie suggested.
“Great idea,” I said.
We had to put the light back on to see what we were doing with the stereo, but we turned it off again after I’d pressed Play.
The tape had only been on for a second when Fliss jumped up. “I want the light back on,” she said, scrambling through all the food to the light switch. Then she turned the tape off. “It’s HORRIBLE!” she said, shivering.
Sometimes I think Fliss is the biggest wimp I’ve ever met. We tried everything we could think of, but there was no way we could persuade her to let us put the tape on in the dark. She said she didn’t mind the torches, but no tape. If we wanted the tape she wanted the light on. In the end we gave in. We didn’t play the tape.
The food was some of the best ever. Rosie’s grey spaghetti was kind of chewy, but it didn’t matter. Lyndz said it was a bowl of horror worms and we could only eat them by sucking them up! We took it in turn slurping them out of the bowl and we slurped the slime as well. It was wicked! The pizza didn’t just look awesome, it tasted scrummy, too. We’d saved the cake for the very last. Fliss began to smile a lot more when we got near the time to cut the cake!
“We should each cut a slice and wish,” she said. “Then maybe we won’t have any more bad luck.”
We all agreed that was a great idea, and I handed Fliss the knife. “You go first,” I said, and Fliss held it over the green jelly-worm icing.
“I wish—” she began, but didn’t get any further.
“Laura! I want you and all your friends down here at once!”
It was Dad. He was shouting up the stairs, and he sounded mad.
We went out to the hall, and there was Dad. At least, it had to be Dad because the thing standing there had Dad’s voice and it was Dad’s height – but otherwise you couldn’t really tell because it was snow white. Or rather flour white… and I knew it was flour because he was holding the cat hot-water bottle in his hand. He looked incredibly weird – I mean, I knew it was my Dad, but he looked like a ghost!
The others didn’t know what to think. Fliss stared with her eyes out on stalks. Rosie and Frankie and Lyndz began to giggle – but they soon stopped when they saw my dad’s face. If this was a ghost, it was a very, very angry ghost!
Oooooops! I couldn’t help thinking that we were having enough bad luck to last us for years and years…
“Is this one of your ridiculous Friday 13th tricks?” Dad roared. “I was in the kitchen, just about to go to a very important meeting – and whoomp! I get attacked by a flying hot-water bottle. One minute I’m standing minding my own business and finishing a quiet cup of tea, and the next – furry cats come zooming out of cupboards. And my best suit is ruined!”
I opened my mouth to say it was all my fault, and none of the others knew about it – but I never got the chance. Just then Mum came out of the sitting room – she saw Dad and she began to laugh. Actually laugh!
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but you do look funny. Whatever happened?”
Dad tried to look dignified, but it wasn’t easy. He waved the furry hot-water bottle in the air. “It’s one of Laura’s silly tricks!” he said. “Or one of her friend’s! They’re all as bad as each other! I was looking for the shoe polish and this” – he waved the cat again – “flew out of the top cupboard in the kitchen and covered me with some kind of white dust!”
I opened my mouth again, but Mum got in there first.
“Oh no!” she said, and she began to dust Dad down. “Do you know, I think for once Kenny’s not to blame? I think it’s my fault! I put that cat away ages ago. I don’t think Kenny even knew where it was – did you?” And Mum turned to me.
Well – what would you have done? Would you have leapt forward and said “No, it was me! I did it!”? I did dither for a milli-second. Then I said, “I didn’t know it was there until today.” Which was true… and I was thinking I’d got away with it when Mum suddenly stopped brushing.
“Just a moment,” she said. “This isn’t dust. It’s flour – I’m sure it is!” Both she and Dad swivelled round to look at me. I could feel myself going pink. Time to own up….
“It jumped out at me this morning,” I said. “I was looking in the kitchen cupboard and it did exactly the same thing to me. It scared me off my stool!”
“So you thought you’d put it back,” Mum said. “And give it a little extra dusting… so when it jumped out again it would be even better!”
Sometimes I think Mum is a mind-reader. I nodded.
“Humph,” Mum said, and she looked at Dad. She still had a twinkle in her eye, but Dad didn’t. Not at all. He was grumbling away like a volcano – I hoped he wasn’t going to explode too loudly.
“It’s all very well playing silly games,” he said. “But my suit’s filthy, and I’m going to be late if I don’t hurry. I think we’d better talk about this tomorrow, Laura.”
“Sorry, Dad,” I said, and he stomped off into the kitchen.
Mum must have been able to brush the worst of the flour off because I heard the car leave about two minutes later.
The others and I hurried back to our interrupted cake. As soon as we’d shut the door it struck me how funny Dad had looked, and I began to giggle.
The others started, too, and when I told them how the furry hot-water bottle had scared me silly before breakfast they laughed even more.
“Your Dad looked like a real ghost!” Lyndz chortled, and she rolled over and over on the floor.
“We should have asked him up to eat horror worms with us!” Rosie cackled. “Whooo! Whoooo! Whooooo! All the worms would have run away!”
“If he walked round the streets like that he’d scare the burglar into the middle of next week!” hooted Frankie.
“I’m glad that furry thing didn’t jump out when we were in the kitchen,” Fliss said. “I think I’d have died of fright!” She probably would have, too, knowing Fliss!
We sat down again to cut the cake, but we were all really giggly. You know what it’s like when anything at all makes you laugh, even if it’s not really funny? Well, we were like that – even Fliss. We waved jelly worms at each other, and we made the jelly spiders plop into the remains of the green slime… and we began to tell ghost stories. We sat in the dark and made them up as we went along, and our ideas became more and more ridiculous.
Lyndz started off the story; she said she’d heard that there was a headless woman who walked round and round the house at midnight where a Dreadful Deed had been done.
Then Rosie said that it must be a house near where she lived, because there were often strange wailings and howlings in the night. She said there were two dogs who howled, but they didn’t sound like dogs at all.
Frankie went next and said that in the old days people believed evil spirits could change into dogs, and this was what these dogs were. We took it in turns to describe what they looked like – “glowing red eyes!” and “slobbering jaws!” and “huge, ginormous teeth!”
“And then,” Frankie said, and she made her voice go very deep and scary, “one of the monster dogs began creeping and crawling along the road… and it saw—”
“Molly the Monster!” I interrupted. “And both dogs turned round and ran away as fast as they could go!” And we all burst into giggles all over again.
“We still haven’t played that tape,” I said at last. “Fliss, if we put the light on can we play it? Only I must warn you, there’s a real live monster at the end!”
Fliss pulled a long face and looked as if she was about to say no again, but we all pleaded with her until she had to give in.
“All right,” she said reluctantly. “As long as the light’s on.”
I squirmed out of my sleeping bag and began crawling across the floor to the light switch. Of course I had to climb over everyone else – and there was some furious wriggling as I wormed my way across the floor.
“I’m a horror worm!” I hissed. “And I’m coming to get you!”
The sleeping-bag worms wriggled this way and that as I pounced. I found knobbly worms and squashy worms and…
Yuck! I put my hand right in the slimiest squishiest thing I’d ever felt. I didn’t have time to say anything, though, because a sleeping-bag worm grabbed me by the ankles and pulled me back along the floor… and the slimy stuff came with me. I tried to grab something, and there was a muffled shriek as my horrible slimy hand met Rosie’s face.
Two screams in one night! Luckily Rosie doesn’t scream as loudly as Fliss – and she had a mouthful of slime as well. But it was still mega-creepy.
Fliss and Lyndz and Frankie sat bolt upright, and Fliss said, “What’s happening?” in a quivery voice.
“Everyone be quiet,” I said. “You’ll get my mum up here.”
I found the light switch and turned it on.
Rosie had green slime on her face, and I had it all over my hand. The carpet had a green smear all along where I’d been dragged – but at least we knew it was only jelly. It hadn’t felt like jelly when I put my hand in it, though; I suppose that’s what happens when you’re in the dark.
I took Rosie to the bathroom to clean herself up, and while I was there I grabbed a towel. The carpet looked better after we’d rubbed it a bit.
“It’s only wet,” Frankie said. “After all, that’s all jelly slime is – mostly water. It’ll have dried by the morning.”
Just to be on the safe side we moved the rest of the food onto one of the beds out of our way.
“Did you see the moonlight when we were in the bathroom?” Rosie asked as we climbed back into our sleeping bags. “We ought to open the curtains. It’s really bright!”
“What about the tape?” Fliss asked.
“I’ll put it on in a minute,” I said. “Let’s look at the moonlight first.”
We opened the curtains and turned the light off. Rosie was quite right. The moon was very bright – it was almost like having the light on.
“Open the window,” Frankie said. “You can see everything out there!”
We opened the window, and peered out. It was very quiet outside, and the moonlight made long shadows across the path.
“It looks magical!” Fliss said, wistfully.
We were quite quiet for a moment or two while we looked outside. And then we saw it. Something – someone – was climbing very carefully over the fence. The fence into my garden.
You’d have thought one of us would have screamed – especially Fliss. But we didn’t. It was very strange. Somehow the idea of a burglar was much much more scary than the real thing. Or perhaps it was because we were safely inside a big house with lots of locks on all the doors, and Mum was downstairs. The burglar looked quite small and skinny, too – not at all massive and thuggish.
“Is it really a burglar?” Rosie whispered.
“I think so,” I whispered back.
The burglar rubbed his hands on his trousers as he came away from the fence. We saw him look at the house – my house! and then move very softly through the plants and bushes towards the path. It was like watching a cat, or some other night animal.
“We ought to tell Mum,” I whispered, but I didn’t get up. After all, he hadn’t done anything yet. He was just walking towards the path…
Yowl! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! Owwwwwwllll lllllllllllie Wowlie!
It was our horror tape, and it was playing at the sort of volume that cracks your ears open and splits your head. I leapt a million miles in the air – but that was nothing to the way the burglar jumped. He jumped as if someone had given him a zillion megawatt electric shock, spun round – and fell flat on his back with a massive thwack!
We were frozen rigid. We hung out of the window staring.
“Is he dead?” Frankie whispered.
“I’d better get Mum!” I said, and hurtled off down the stairs.
Mum was halfway up the stairs, anyway. I guess she couldn’t have missed the noise – which was still blaring out. She could see at once that something was up, though – and when I blurted out, “Mum! Mum! There’s a burglar dead on the path!” she flew to the phone.
Have you ever had to dial 999? I’ve always wanted to – and now Mum was doing it! She was really calm and cool as well. I’d have probably forgotten my address, my telephone number and my name!
“Right,” Mum said as she snapped down the receiver. “Where’s this burglar?”
“You mustn’t go outside!” I gasped. “Supposing he was only winded? He might hurt us!”
“I wasn’t going to,” Mum said. “We’ll look out of the window.”
Our tape suddenly went quiet. Frankie came to the top of the stairs. “He’s still there!” she whispered down. “He’s moved a little – but he hasn’t got up!”
Molly burst into the hall. “What’s going on?” she said. She glared at me. “More of your silly baby Friday 13th games, I suppose.”
“Molly,” Mum said, “just go back into the sitting room. There’s nothing to worry about.”
I was so proud of my mum! She was still dead calm. Ferocious burglars were lurking in our garden, and she was acting as cool as a cucumber!
Molly gave me a furious look and disappeared.
When we looked out of the dining-room window I could see the burgla
r much better. He really did look small.
“He’s not wearing a mask,” I said.
“No,” Mum said. “And he’s not wearing a black-and-white striped top or carrying a bag on his back marked SWAG, either!
The burglar started to move. He tried to sit up, but there seemed to be something wrong with his leg.
“Dear me,” Mum said suddenly. “He must be badly hurt! Look! He’s sitting in a pool of blood! Poor man! I’d better go and see if I can help him!”
“Oh!” I said, and a massive flash of understanding zoomed into my brain. I knew why the burglar had fallen over. He’d slipped – in our trail.
“Hang on, Mum!” I said. “It isn’t real blood. It’s the melted stuff from Frankie’s pudding. Rather a lot of it got – er – spilt on the path. That’s why he slipped!”
I think Mum was about to say something when we heard the police cars.
DEE – DAW – DEE – DAW – DEE – DAW
I’ve heard them hundreds of times before, but this time was different. This time they were coming to our house! The burglar heard it, too, and he tried to get up again – but he couldn’t.
Mum went to the front door. “Laura,” she said, “go back upstairs.”
“But Mum—” I protested.
“Go!” Mum said, and when she talks in that tone of voice I do as I’m told. Fast!
Rosie, Lyndz, Frankie and Fliss grabbed me as I came through the door. They all started speaking at once.
“We heard the police car!”
“Look – he’s trying to move!”
“Here they come! I can see the lights!”
“Why did he fall over? Is he all right?”
And then four policemen came charging into our garden with the biggest torches you ever saw – and one of them was kneeling by the burglar checking to see where he was hurt.
“There’s a lot of blood around here, Sarge,” a big policeman said. “Where d’you think it’s come from?”
Another policeman bent down and peered with his torch at the path. Frankie and I held our breath. Our trail of blood glistened very red in the beam of light. Then the policeman stood up, and we could see him grinning. His teeth flashed in the moonlight. “That’s not blood, Sarge. It’s jam – or something very like it!”
