by Alex Ratt
‘Um, yeah.’
She snorted. ‘You’d better change the sign outside,’ she said. ‘It should read: The House of Lame. See you later, blockheads.’
Nerf took off his mask. ‘It didn’t work,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s because she’s not a real girl,’ I reminded him. ‘It’ll be different with the Sweet Street girls.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Nerf.
‘Of course I’m sure. Look at their stall.’
We peeked around the edge of the pirate flag.
The House of Beauty had a big pink sign decorated with hearts and flowers. As we watched, a little girl ran out of the stall with a butterfly painted on her cheek.
‘You see?’ I said.
‘I see,’ said Nerf.
‘Hang on!’ I said, because now Little Ellie herself was coming out of The House of Beauty, followed by a friend.
‘Maybe we should take a break and visit The House of Horrors,’ Little Ellie was saying.
‘I don’t know,’ said her friend. ‘What if it’s too scary?’
‘The sign says it’s a sweet and lovely House of Horrors,’ Little Ellie pointed out.
‘And the glitter’s nice,’ said her friend.
‘Do you think it’s possible we’ve misjudged the Stinky boys?’
‘The sparkles look quite sensitive, actually,’ her friend agreed.
‘I think we should go in,’ Little Ellie decided.
Yes! Our moment had arrived!
‘Quick, Nerf!’ I said. ‘Put your mask on. Here they come.’
When the two girls pushed back the flag and entered The House of Horrors, we were ready.
‘I don’t know about this,’ said Little Ellie’s friend. ‘It’s really dark in here.’
‘Be brave,’ said Little Ellie, but she sounded uncertain.
‘Ghost noises!’ I whispered to Nerf.
Wooooooo . . .
WOOOOOOOOO . . .
WOOOOOOOOO . . .
Little Ellie shivered. ‘What was that?’ she said with a quaver in her voice.
‘Mad cackling!’ I whispered.
Bwahahaha . . .
BWAHAHAHA . . .
BWAHAHAHA . . .
‘Ooooh!’ Little Ellie’s friend jumped.
‘Screams!’ I whispered.
Aaaaaagh!
AAAAAGH!
AAAAAAAAAGH!
Both the girls screamed too. ‘AAAAAAAAAGH!’ They sounded terrified!
This was going well. It was time for the spiders . . .
Moving around behind our victims, I pushed them forwards into the spiders.
‘Eek, spiders!’ cried Little Ellie.
‘I’m scared of spiders!’ cried her friend.
This was going very well.
‘Torches, Nerf,’ I ordered in a low voice.
We would show them our zombie faces, and then it was time for the stinky surprise . . .
As we turned on the torches, I felt a clammy hand grasp the back of my neck. I spun around, and what I saw made me jump back in terror.
‘Clowns!’ Nerf shrieked.
‘Evil clowns!’ I shrieked.
Then everything went dark as a blindfold was tied over my eyes.
The evil clowns began to push us.
‘Where are you taking us?’ I cried. ‘Little Ellie, help!’
But Little Ellie wasn’t paying attention.
‘What’s in this bucket?’ she was saying. ‘Do you think it’s blood?’
‘It looks like blood,’ said her friend. ‘But it smells much, much worse.’
Little Ellie’s voice was cold as she said, ‘Do you think those Stinky boys were planning to play a trick on us?’
‘That would be a very bad idea,’ said her friend. ‘It might make the evil clowns angry . . . ’
Our captors led us out of The House of Horrors, and for a few minutes we could hear the happy cries and laughter of people enjoying the fete. But as we were pushed through a doorway those pleasant sounds were replaced by a dreadful caterwauling.
‘What is it?’ said Nerf as we were forced to our knees by firm hands on our shoulders. ‘What’s that terrible sound?’
‘Block your ears!’ I said.
Soppy love songs were pouring like syrup into the air around us.
‘Please,’ Nerf whimpered. ‘Make it stop.’
All at once, the blindfolds were ripped from our eyes.
I blinked. The walls were festooned with pink streamers and hearts dangled from the ceiling. Girls in fairy wings were fluttering about.
‘What is this place?’ Nerf asked, unable to keep the tremor from his voice. ‘Is this where the evil clowns live?’
‘I’ll tell you what it is, Nerf,’ I said. ‘It’s a true House of Horrors—and our captors were no clowns.’
‘That’s right,’ a voice said.
Looking up, I saw Little Ellie.
‘The sign outside might say that this is a House of Beauty, but it’s not: it’s a House of Horrors made especially for Stinky boys.’
‘We should pour their own stinky blood over them,’ a girl in fairy wings suggested. I noticed she was holding a clown mask in her hand.
‘Oh no,’ said Little Ellie. ‘I have something much better in store . . . ’
She gave a signal and someone began pulling at my hair. Then someone else came towards my face with a paintbrush. The air was filled with the scent of flowers and the love song grew louder and louder. There were flashes of light, like reflections from a disco ball. Overcome by dread, I closed my eyes.
I don’t know how much time passed before I realised that everything had gone quiet.
I opened my eyes. The House of Beauty was dark.
‘Nerf?’ I said into the blackness. ‘Are you there?’
‘I think so,’ said Nerf’s voice.
‘Let’s get out of here before they come back,’ I said.
I tried to stand up but my legs were too shaky to hold me.
‘Save yourself, Nerf!’ I cried. ‘Run! Run like the wind!’
‘I don’t think I can,’ he said. ‘The love songs, the smell of flowers . . . they’ve left me too weak to run.’
‘Crawl then,’ I said. ‘Crawl like the wind!’
We crawled through the entrance of the stall and lay panting on the grass outside.
‘What happened in there?’ Nerf asked.
I sat up and looked at him. For a moment, I couldn’t speak, the sight was so appalling. ‘Oh, my poor old friend,’ I said sadly. ‘Look what they’ve done to you.’
There was pink spray in his hair and glittering hearts on his cheeks and a flower behind his ear.
Nerf sat up too. ‘Look what they’ve done to you!’ he said.
‘Me? What’s wrong with me?’
‘I can’t . . . I can’t . . . ’ Nerf shook his head. ‘You have to see for yourself.’ He pointed to a stall a few metres away. ‘There’s a hall of mirrors over there.’
We got up and staggered inside.
Together we moved from mirror to mirror.
‘Eeek! I’m hideous!’ I said.
I gazed at my reflection in disgust. My hair had been curled and I was wearing a crown of flowers. There were butterflies painted all over my face.
I glanced at Nerf, who was staring at his reflection with dismay.
‘You look very pretty, Nerf,’ I said gloomily.
‘You look very pretty too, Brian,’ said Nerf. ‘But what are we going to do now? We can’t let anyone see us like this.’
‘We’re going to put on our zombie masks and ride home as fast as we can.’
I was dreading going to school the next day, but to my relief, none of our classmates seemed to have heard about our trip to the horrific House of Beauty. Not even the Sweet Street girls mentioned it.
‘Good day at school, Brian?’ Dad asked at the dinner table that night.
‘It could have been much, much worse, Dad,’ I said.
‘You, Brenda?’
‘It was a very good day, Dad,’ she said. ‘By the way, the school newsletter came out today. Here—I think you’ll find something very interesting inside.’
‘Have you won another award, dear?’ Mum asked her.
‘Even better,’ said Brenda.
‘Oh, look,’ said Dad, who was leafing through the pages. ‘There’s a picture of Brian and Nerf from the school fete.’
A picture?! Suddenly I remembered being blinded by what I thought was a disco ball. It must have been a camera flash!
‘Nooooo!’ I said, reaching for the newsletter. But Mum grabbed it from Dad and held it out of my reach.
‘Aw,’ said Mum. ‘What a beautiful photo. You two boys look so SWEET!’
‘Happy birthday, Brian,’ Nerf said as he got into the car. ‘Hi, Mrs Bumf. Thanks for picking me up.’
‘Hello, Nerf,’ said Mum. ‘Are you ready to be a keeper for a day?’
Mum and Dad had given me the most awesome birthday present—today Nerf and I would be going behind the scenes at the zoo, working as zookeepers.
‘You bet I am!’ said Nerf.
‘Me too!’ I said, and I tooted on my kazoo.
‘I wish you’d stop playing that thing,’ said Mum with a sigh.
‘Where did you get it?’ said Nerf, looking at my kazoo admiringly.
‘Brenda gave it to me for my birthday. Isn’t it brilliant? I’m taking my ka-zoo to the zoo. Get it?’
‘Got it,’ said Nerf. ‘And that is brilliant. I guess that’s why everyone calls your sister Brain.’
‘No they don’t,’ I reminded him. ‘They call me Brain.’
‘Who calls you—’
TOOT! TOOT! I gave two blasts on my kazoo then began to sing: ‘We’re going to the zoo, zoo, zoo . . . ’
‘Wait,’ said Nerf. ‘I’ve got a better one.’ He sang:
‘Happy birthday to you
You live in a zoo
You look like a monkey
And you smell like one too!’
I tooted along on the kazoo.
‘That’s not very nice, Nerf,’ said Mum, when we were done.
‘It’s okay, Mum,’ I said. ‘Monkeys are cool.’
‘I want to see a cheetah,’ said Nerf. ‘Do you think we will?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Zookeepers get to hang out with all the animals. We’ll probably be doing stuff like feeding rhinos and bathing seals and exercising elephants.’
‘We’re going to have so much fun,’ said Nerf. ‘I bet being a zookeeper is the best job in the world.’
Mum let us out in front of the zoo, where a keeper was waiting to meet us.
‘You must be Brian and Nerf,’ she said.
We nodded.
‘I’m Kylie. Today you’re going to experience a day in the life of a zookeeper, doing exactly what real zookeepers do.’ She led us into the zoo. ‘Let’s start with the rhinos.’
Nerf and I looked at each other. Rhinos? Ripper!
‘This is going to be the best birthday ever!’ I said to Nerf.
As we walked along behind Kylie, Nerf said to me in a low voice, ‘What is that smell?’
There was a smell all right—a really bad one.
‘I don’t know,’ I whispered. ‘Maybe some kind of toxic gas. I hope they don’t have to evacuate the zoo. That would spoil my birthday.’
‘Yeah, that would be terrible,’ said Nerf. Raising his voice, he said, ‘Um, excuse me, Kylie. What’s that smell?’
Kylie looked puzzled. ‘There’s a smell?’ she said. She sniffed the air. ‘Oh, that’s just the animals,’ she said. ‘When you work here every day you stop noticing it.’
‘Are all the animals smelly?’ said Nerf.
‘Most of them,’ she said.
‘Even the cheetahs?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Kylie. ‘The cheetahs are very smelly.’
‘What about the monkeys?’ I asked.
Kylie nodded. ‘Especially the monkeys,’ she said.
Nerf nudged me. ‘You know I was only joking, right?’
‘About what?’
‘About you smelling like a monkey. You don’t smell nearly this bad.’
‘Thanks, Nerf,’ I said.
‘I’ll tell you what’s really smelly, though . . . ’ said Kylie, as she unlocked a door and led us into an enclosure.
‘Argh!’ said Nerf. ‘Get a whiff of that!’ He pinched his nose closed.
‘Ugh!’ I said, pinching my nose too. ‘That’s repulsive! What is this place?’
‘We’re in the rhinos’ private quarters,’ Kylie explained. ‘The part that visitors to the zoo don’t see.’
I looked around the enclosure. It was mostly bare earth with a few rocks and trees. ‘Where are the rhinos?’ I asked. ‘Are we going to hang out with them?’
Kylie laughed. ‘Of course not—that would be way too dangerous. They’re in the exhibit. You’re just here to clean up after them.’
‘Clean up after them?’ I repeated. ‘You mean . . . ?’
She handed me a rake and gave Nerf a shovel. ‘I need you to shovel up the rhino poo.’
We spent the next half-hour raking and shovelling big brown mushy piles of rhino poo into a wheelbarrow. By the time we were done, we had rhino poo up to our knees. Rhinos are revolting.
‘Good work,’ Kylie said when we’d finished.
‘Where are we going next?’ I asked her, glad to leave the rhino enclosure behind.
‘The bat cave,’ she said.
Nerf and I looked at each other. Bat cave? Cool!
Kylie took us past the giraffes and the lemurs and the wombats, telling us lots of interesting facts along the way.
‘In South Africa they call old male giraffes “stink bulls”’, she said. ‘Because of their smell.’
‘Did you know that lemurs have stink fights?’ she asked. ‘They rub their tails through the scent glands on their wrists and shoulders and then wave them at each other.’
‘Wombats do cube-shaped poos,’ she told us.
‘You must have to really love stink to be a zookeeper,’ Nerf whispered to me.
Kylie stopped by a door built into the side of a hill and pulled out her keys. She unlocked the door and we entered a dim tunnel that led to a cave. I could hear the bats squealing and clicking above me.
‘Move slowly and quietly so you don’t alarm them,’ Kylie said in a low voice.
‘What happens when they get alarmed?’ I asked.
‘Guano.’
Before I could ask what she was talking about, my breath caught in my throat and my eyes began to water as we were hit by a ghastly gas.
‘I can’t see!’ said Nerf loudly.
‘Oh no!’ he cried. ‘Something got me!’
‘What is it?’ I gasped. ‘Who unleashed those foul fumes? Are they trying to poison us?’
Kylie just laughed. ‘That’s the guano.’
‘What’s guano?’ I asked.
‘You see what Nerf is covered in?’
Squinting, I saw that Nerf had a scattering of brown seeds on his head and shoulders.
‘Yuck!’ I said loudly. ‘Is that poo?!’
‘Oh no!’ I said, as soft rotten-smelling seeds rained down on my head. ‘It got me too!’
‘That’s right,’ said Kylie. ‘Guano is poo. And your job is to scrub it off the cave floor.’ She handed us each a scrubbing brush. ‘Try to breathe through your mouth,’ she advised.
‘This zoo sure has a lot of poo,’ Nerf remarked as we began to scrub. ‘When are we going to do what real zookeepers do?’
‘This is what we do,’ said Kylie.
‘You mean I’m going to spend my birthday cleaning up poo?’ I said, so loudly that a bat got alarmed.
Before Kylie could answer, the radio on her belt crackled.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’d better see what’s up.’
She walked back into the tunnel and began talking with the person on the other end of the radi
o.
When she came back she said, ‘Sorry, guys, I have to leave you here on your own for a while. Miggles has got out of his enclosure and is roaming the zoo. We need to find him before he causes any trouble.’
‘Who’s Miggles?’ I asked. ‘A man-eating lion?’
‘He’s a very naughty monkey,’ said Kylie. ‘I shouldn’t be long. When you’re done, lock up behind you and wait for me outside.’ She handed me her keys.
Nerf and I began to scrub.
The bats began to squirt.
Scrub.
Scrub.
Scrub.
‘These bats are faulty,’ Nerf said crossly. ‘They’re guanoing even when we’re not being alarming.’
At last we were done. There was no guano in the cave—because it was all over us.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said.
I walked over to the tunnel.
‘Where are you?’ said Nerf.
‘Over here by the tunnel.’
‘I can’t see you,’ said Nerf. ‘I accidentally breathed through my nose and now I’ve been overpowered by the gas. Help me, Brian!’
‘I know!’ I said. I pulled the kazoo out of my pocket. ‘Follow the sound,’ I told Nerf.
I tooted very quietly (I didn’t want the bats to get alarmed all over the clean floor) and Nerf followed the sound across the cave, through the tunnel and out into the light.
I locked the door to the tunnel behind us with Kylie’s keys.
‘Thanks, Brian,’ said Nerf, wiping his streaming eyes. ‘You saved me. Using the kazoo was a really clever idea.’
‘That’s why they call me Brain,’ I said.
‘Who calls you—’
TOOT! TOOT! I tooted my kazoo— then all of a sudden it was snatched from my mouth.
‘Hey, Nerf,’ I said. ‘Give me back my kazoo.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ said Nerf. ‘It was him!’
I looked where Nerf was pointing and saw a monkey scampering away down a path.
‘That monkey has stolen my kazoo!’
