I poked my head round the door and saw Mum leaning over the bathtub, covered in soapsuds, wrestling with
a very angry Fatty. Mum looked up and sighed at me.
‘Oh, good, you’re back,’ Mum sighed. ‘You’ll never guess what Fatty has been up to with my perfume bottles!’
‘What?’ I said innocently, as Mum lathered up the angry cat’s fur with shampoo.
‘He knocked them all over,’ said Mum. ‘And now he’s covered in the stuff!’
I couldn’t help laughing to myself as Fatty glared at me from the bathtub.
It didn’t take long to clear up my room, and when I finished there was nothing under my bed at all. And it stayed that way for a very long time, not least because Fatty ponged too much to lure any more monsters home.
And a Spook
Apparently the Victorians lived more than a hundred years ago. Mrs Marsh, our history teacher, had been droning on about them for so long it felt like another hundred years had passed!
‘Jake Cake!’ yelled Mrs Marsh. ‘Are we boring you?’
‘No, Mrs Marsh,’ I lied.
‘Then kindly take your head off the desk and sit up properly!’ she snapped, standing over me like an army sergeant inspecting her troops.
I pulled myself upright with a groan while Mrs Marsh gave me a big long lecture about how lucky I was to be able to come to school and learn lots of interesting things.
‘Only very fortunate children could go to school in Victorian times,’ she said. ‘The less fortunate ones were sent out to work, and a boy of your age could easily find himself stuffed up a chimney!’ I laughed because I thought she was joking, but Mrs Marsh got really angry.
‘Some of those poor chimney sweeps never came down again,’ she added gravely.
GULP!
I quickly sat up straight in my chair, in case Mrs Marsh decided the old school chimneys needed sweeping, when someone from behind tapped me on the shoulder and sniggered.
Now you’re probably thinking it was just one of my classmates mucking around. But I sit right at the back of the class, which means there is no one behind me!
I turned round and looked at the bare wall.
Hmmm, I thought, because I didn’t know what else to think.
I was still looking round when Mrs Marsh saw me and gave me a warning glare. And because I didn’t want to get into any more trouble – or shoved up a chimney – I quickly sat up straight again and tried to concentrate on the class.
I felt the tap, tap, tapping on my shoulder again, but harder this time.
‘Oi! Pack it in!’ I yelled, spinning round quickly to catch the tap, tap, tapper in the act. But there was no one there and no one could have run back to their seat that fast!
Suddenly Mrs Marsh was standing over me with a very cross look on her face.
‘What is it now?’ she demanded.
‘Someone tapped me on the shoulder,’ I said. But I probably should have made something up instead because the whole class was looking at me as if I’d gone mad.
‘And who do you suppose tapped you on the shoulder?’ Mrs Marsh asked, glancing at the empty space behind me. ‘The Invisible Man?’
The rest of the class giggled at her joke.
‘Or perhaps it was Mr Nobody?’ she said with a puzzled look on her face.
I shrugged helplessly and the class giggled even louder.
Mrs Marsh shook her head and began to make her way back to the front of the classroom when a very strange thing happened. The sharp pencil that was sitting on my desk floated up in the air, shot forward and jabbed my teacher firmly in the bottom!
‘OWWWWW!’ she yelped.
Mrs Marsh snapped round, spotted the sharp pencil that had dropped back down on my desk and her eyes slowly widened.
‘But…’ I said.
‘Not another word, Jake Cake!’ Mrs Marsh growled. ‘Take yourself to the head teacher’s office immediately and explain to Mr Barton exactly why I’ve sent you there!’ She snatched the pencil and held it up to eye level.
‘And I’ll be keeping this as evidence!’ she added.
There was no point in arguing. Even I would have thought I’d jabbed Mrs Marsh in the bottom – if I didn’t already know I hadn’t. So I left the classroom with my head hung low and made my way down the corridor to the head teacher’s office. And I took my time because I wasn’t in any hurry to get there.
‘He he,’ said a voice behind me.
I stopped and looked around the corridor but there was no one there.
‘He he,’ said the voice again, although closer this time.
‘Who’s there?’ I demanded.
A finger tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned round there was a
boy standing beside me, and he was grinning. The boy was about the same age as me but he was wearing very strange clothes.
‘ ’Ow d’ya do?’ said the boy.
‘How do I do what?’ I said, not knowing what he meant.
‘ ’Ow d’ya do?’ said the boy again.
I frowned and scratched my head.
‘I say “’Ow d’ya do?”,’ said the boy. ‘And then you say “’Ow d’ya do?” back.’
‘ ’Ow d’ya do?’ I said uncertainly.
‘Very well, thanks for askin’,’ he said, tipping his cap. ‘And y’self?’
I considered his question for a moment and then got very angry.
‘NOT VERY WELL THANKS TO YOU!’
I yelled – realizing this kid was somehow to blame for jabbing Mrs Marsh in the bottom with my pencil (although I still wasn’t sure exactly how he did it).
‘Aw, I was just ’avin’ a bit of fun!’ said the boy.
‘But how did you…’
I stopped because I suddenly noticed that, besides wearing strange clothes and talking in a funny way, the boy was also definitely a little bit see-through! I made a few quick calculations in my head and then, instead of carrying on with what I was saying, I said:
Because that’s what you’re meant to do when you realize you’re standing in an empty corridor having a conversation with a GHOST!
I’ve dealt with ghosts before and when you scream they usually disappear (or you disappear because you’ve legged it in the opposite direction). But instead of disappearing, the ghost boy just frowned at me.
‘’Ave you finished?’ he said calmly.
‘Uh?’ I said.
‘’Ave you finished screaming?’ said the ghost.
‘Um, yes,’ I said, feeling a bit silly because he wasn’t actually scary.
‘Good,’ said the ghost. ‘Well, at least you didn’t scarper. I don’t know why but most people usually scarper when I show m’self to ’em, which is very rude if you ask me.’
‘They probably scarper because you’re a ghost!’ I said. ‘You do know you’re a ghost?’ I added cautiously, because sometimes ghosts don’t even realize they’re ghosts, and that can get really confusing.
‘Of course I know!’ said the ghost. ‘How else could I poke a teacher in the bottom with a pencil without getting caught?’
‘But Mrs Marsh thinks I did it!’ I said angrily. ‘And now I’m in deep trouble!’
The ghost shrugged his shoulders in a way that meant he didn’t really care.
‘You can’t just get away with it!’ I said. ‘It’s not fair!’
‘I can do whatever I want,’ snapped the ghost. ‘And I will get away with it because I’ve been getting away with it for over a hundred years.’
‘Over a hundred years?’ I gasped. ‘Does that mean you’re a Victorian?’
The ghost thought about it for a moment.
‘Well, Queen Victoria was on the throne when I was alive,’ he said. ‘So yeah, I suppose I am.’
‘Were you a chimney sweep that never came down again?’ I asked, because he did look pretty scruffy.
‘No!’ said the ghost who seemed a bit offended. ‘I was a young gentleman!’
‘So you were one of the lucky Victorians w
ho went to school?’ I asked, and thought that Mrs Marsh would be pleased that I’d remembered her lecture – or at least she would have been pleased if her bottom wasn’t so sore!
‘Lucky? I don’t think so!’ said the ghost. ‘This place was a lot stricter in those days!’
‘You went to this school?’ I gasped. I hadn’t realized it was so old.
The ghost nodded.
All of a sudden I heard footsteps coming down the corridor. The ghost boy heard them too because he winked mischievously and then vanished into thin air!
The footsteps belonged to Mrs Price, the head teacher’s secretary. She was heading towards me with a stack of grey folders.
‘Jake Cake!’ said Mrs Price, who knew me because I’ve been sent to the head teacher’s office loads of times – mostly for stuff that wasn’t my fault. ‘Why are you standing around in the corridor looking like you’ve seen a ghost?’
‘I’ve been sent to Mr Barton’s office,’ I sighed.
‘Oh, what luck!’ said Mrs Price, shoving the stack of folders into my arms. ‘Would you be an absolute dear and carry these for me? I do suffer terribly with my back.’
With an armful of folders I followed
Mrs Price, but I kept an eye out for the ghostly troublemaker. I thought he might jab Mrs Price in the bottom with a pencil or try to trip me up, but I couldn’t see him anywhere. I hoped he’d gone back to wherever he’d come from.
‘Just pop them down there,’ said Mrs Price, nodding to her desk. ‘And I’ll tell Mr Barton you’re here… again.’ She smiled and disappeared into the head teacher’s office.
I was about to put the folders down when the ghost boy suddenly appeared in front of Mrs Price’s desk. I suppose I could have just gone straight through him (he was a ghost after all). But that would have been too creepy so I stepped back and gasped instead.
The ghost looked at me.
Then he looked at the neat stack of folders in my arms.
Then he smiled, narrowed his eyes, and ran straight through me and out the other side in a WHOOSH of chilly wind that sent the stack of folders flying up in the air!
(By the way, having a ghost run straight through you is very creepy. The sudden chill takes your breath away like jumping into a very cold swimming pool. BRRRRR!)
I looked up and watched in slow motion as each grey folder fell open above my head – showering its contents all around the room in a swirling blizzard of bright white paper.
As the last pages fluttered to the ground I noticed two figures standing in the doorway,
staring at me with their mouths open.
But neither of them was the ghost boy. They were Mrs Price and Mr Barton.
GULP!
At this point I would usually take a deep breath and explain that none of it was my fault. But I was the only one standing outside the office and I’d been holding the folders. No one would believe a sneaky spook had run right through me, blasting the folders with a ghostly wind.
So I said nothing.
Mrs Price sank to her knees, gazed sadly at the fallen files and began slowly gathering them together in a pile.
In the meantime Mr Barton had grown very red in the face and looked like an angry tomato.
The head teacher must have been too angry to speak because he just lowered his head and pointed towards the door to his office.
I’ve seen the inside of the head teacher’s office many times, but I’d never seen Mr Barton looking so cross. He sat at his desk grinding his teeth together as though struggling to work out a big enough punishment for me.
Mrs Marsh was called to the office to give her account of The Jabbing (which is what they were calling it). And because there was nothing I could say that anyone would believe, I just stared helplessly at the carpet as my teacher waved the pencil in the air like a sword – eagerly demonstrating the jabbing motion.
The last time I was in the head teacher’s office was when a baby dinosaur chewed up my homework. Mr Barton had given me a big long lecture about making up stories that aren’t true (even though I didn’t make it up – it really happened, but I’ll tell you about that another time).
This time Mr Barton must have been thinking up a really long lecture because he didn’t say a word after Mrs Marsh left the room. He just grimaced at the pencil on the desk.
Around the walls of the office were loads of photographs of all the old head teachers and they were quite fun to look at because the old ones had freaky hair and weird-shaped moustaches – even the women!
The oldest one there was called Mr Cane and the picture was so old it was
a kind of brownish-yellowy colour. Mr Cane definitely had the dodgiest moustache and looked very fierce.
I was still looking around the room when a familiar figure suddenly appeared behind Mr Barton’s chair. It was the ghost boy and he was grinning and waving at me. He must have been in the room the whole time, probably enjoying how much trouble I was in.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Mr Barton, finally looking up from the dreaded pointy pencil. ‘Is there anything you would like to say about The Jabbing before I decide upon a suitable punishment?’
I shrugged my shoulders and tried to ignore the sniggering ghost boy – who was now making faces at me – when my eyes fell on the old portraits again. It was then that I noticed the dates at the bottom and suddenly had an idea.
It was a long shot, but a long shot is better than no shot at all!
‘I do have one thing to say,’ I said quickly, turning back to Mr Barton.
‘Yes?’ said the head teacher, raising his eyebrows. ‘Speak up, boy.’
It was just as well Mr Barton said ‘speak up’, because that was exactly what I planned to do. I took a massive deep breath and yelled at the very top of my voice.
‘MR CAAAAAAAAAANE!!!’
I have to say it was pretty loud, so loud that Mr Barton nearly fell off his chair.
Upon hearing the name the ghost boy immediately stopped making rude faces and made one with ‘GULP!’ written all over it. His eyes grew wide, his mouth fell open and his face went very pale – and ghosts are pretty pale to begin with.
Suddenly a tall dark figure appeared through the wall. He was wearing a long black cloak and a flat black hat with a tassel on the top. He stood behind the ghost boy and snorted through his nostrils!
It was Mr Cane, the ghost head teacher! ‘UH-OH!’ yelled the ghost boy. Then he legged it right through Mr Barton, through Mr Barton’s desk
and out through the door – immediately followed by Mr Cane and a great gush of ghostly wind that swept all the papers off the desk and up into the air.
It all happened really quickly, but while Mr Barton was busy watching his second paper blizzard of the day, I happened to look down – and saw that the pointy pencil had mysteriously vanished.
Hmmm, I thought to myself.
But the mystery of the missing pencil didn’t stay a mystery for long.
‘OWWWWW!’ yelped Mrs Marsh from the other side of the door. And I knew it was Mrs Marsh because I’d heard the exact same ‘OWWWWW!’ earlier, back in the classroom.
It was the unmistakable ‘OWWWWW!’ of a Jabbing!
As the papers fluttered down and settled on the office floor, the door creaked open and Mrs Marsh stepped in, looking very startled and rubbing her bottom. She glanced at me suspiciously, gave the head teacher a puzzled look, and then rubbed her bottom some more.
‘What–? How–?’ she stammered, trying to work it out.
Jake Cake: The School Dragon Page 3
