by Z. Fraillon
By Zana Fraillon
Illustrations by Simon Swingler
Monstrum House: Sucked Under
published in 2010 by
Hardie Grant Egmont
85 High Street
Prahran, Victoria 3181, Australia
www.hardiegrantegmont.com.au
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.
A CiP record for this title is available from the National Library of Australia.
Text copyright © 2010 Zana Fraillon
Illustration and design copyright © 2010 Hardie Grant Egmont
Design and illustration by Simon Swingler
Typeset by Ektavo
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Author dedication:
To Mum and Dad, for making me a writer
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
1
Jasper McPhee pulled himself over the top of the icy wall. He landed lightly on his bare feet and rolled across the snowy ground, just dodging the swinging blades that whooshed from the tree tops. That was close, he thought. He shot a quick look at his watch. He had two minutes left to finish the combat course. He might just make it.
Only one more stretch of ground to go, then he had to get past the mud and up the rope. He commando-crawled quickly through the snow, keeping his head down and eyes up, like he’d been taught. One minute left …
Jasper leapt over the seething pile of mud, trying not to think of all the things that could be in there. Their teacher Sir Tavish had told them that it was infested with Midgiemunches, but Jasper hoped he wasn’t serious. After all, the venom in a Midgiemunch was strong enough to paralyse a small child.
Jasper sprang upwards to catch hold of the swinging rope. Twenty seconds to go …
I’m actually going to make it! Jasper thought. No penalty points! He almost whooped with glee. The kids who didn’t finish the course in time were given ten penalty points. Twenty penalty points meant getting a punishment, and in the last year Jasper had earnt himself enough punishments to last a lifetime.
Jasper swung confidently over the icy lake and landed firmly on the bank, just as Sir Tavish’s bugle sounded. Time was up.
There was a groan from the students who were still doing the course. Jasper’s friend Felix had only just reached the rope. Felix shook his head as he collected a penalty card from Sir Tavish, and made his way over to Jasper.
Saffy joined the boys, looking smug at having finished the course before both Felix and Jasper – again. It annoyed both boys that they were constantly being beaten through the combat course by a girl – even if she was a girl who could easily destroy both of them in a kickboxing contest.
Of all the classes at Monstrum House, Combative Calculations was Jasper’s favourite.
Each class was a huge obstacle course, and the stunts they learnt were brilliant. The best one so far was learning how to flip off a high ledge and land so it didn’t even hurt. It was just like being a stuntman in an action film. The only bad thing about Combative Calculations was that Sir Tavish always made them stand barefoot in the snow at the end of class while he told them how they could improve.
‘A’RIGH’! LEF’ FEET! NOW!’ Sir Tavish bellowed.
Everyone balanced on one bare foot on the icy ground. They had done this every day for almost a year now, so no-one thought it was unusual anymore. Freezing your feet in the snow was the only way to stop your brain from shrinking. The students at Monstrum House had been warned about brain shrinkage. According to their principal, most adults had brains the size of prunes. A shrunken brain meant that you couldn’t see monsters anymore. And if you couldn’t see monsters, you were in trouble.
‘Tha’ was pathetic,’ Sir Tavish yelled.
Jasper rolled his eyes. Sir Tavish gave this speech at the end of every class. It had taken the students a while to realise that if Sir Tavish didn’t single you out, you were doing well.
‘Ye, McPhee,’ Sir Tavish turned, ‘Din’t ye even nootice the flyin’ Scramblers when ye flipped o’er the wall?’
Jasper glanced at Felix. There were flying Scramblers? ‘Um, well ...’ Jasper muttered.
‘PATHETIC! Ye need to watch for more than one monstar! Doon’t ye know tha’ monstars doon’t always go it aloone? They can team oop and git ye twice as good! Change feet!’
The students dutifully swapped feet as Sir Tavish walked up and down the line, singling out students to yell at. Saffy, as usual, didn’t get a mention.
‘Now, I want two lines nex’ teh each other. Be quick aboot it,’ Sir Tavish ordered.
Jasper looked curiously at Felix. This was new.
‘Look a’ the person nex’ teh ye,’ Sir Tavish said.
Jasper made a stupid face at Felix, who choked back a laugh.
‘Somethin’ teh say, Mr Brown?’ Sir Tavish asked. ‘Or are ye just laughin’ because ye’re stuck with McPhee for yer nex’ test?’
The students had never done a test in pairs before. Cool, Jasper thought. He glanced behind him. Saffy was paired with Callum, a small kid from their class. Saffy would be happy – Callum was easily the best student at Combative Calculations.
‘Sorry, mate,’ Jasper whispered to Felix. ‘Let’s just hope it’s not an important test.’
Felix grinned in response. Jasper knew they would actually team up pretty well together.
‘Head back noow. Stenka is waitin’ to show ye teh ye test rooms. It’s a test on Morphers, so keep ye wits aboot ye. We don’t have tha’ much anti-venom on hand.’
Jasper hoped Sir Tavish was joking. ‘How can they be running out of anti-venom?’ he whispered to Felix.
‘Um, let’s see now …’ said Felix. ‘Could it be because this is a monster-hunting school and kids get Monstered, like, every single day?’
‘Good point,’ said Jasper. ‘But it’s just a test, right? I reckon they’d stop it if you were in real trouble. That’s what they always do in tests.’
Sir Tavish’s voice boomed across their conversation. ‘Hurry up, ye two!’ he yelled. ‘This test ain’t like no other ye’ve doone!’
‘There goes that theory,’ Felix grimaced.
2
The headphones in the test room were broken. Definitely broken. The high-pitched beeping was beginning to get annoying. Jasper gave the headphones one last tap before ripping them off his head.
He looked around the dark room for any sign of a monster. His eyes were stinging. His head was aching. Maybe I’m getting a cold from standing in the stupid snow so much, he thought distractedly. He was finding it hard to concentrate. Test. Think about the test, he reminded himself.
Jasper heard something shuffling around in the room. Something clumsy. It grunted as it walked right into a wall.
Silently, Jasper pulled the net from his hunt belt. He could just make out a figure in the far corner of the room. It was about the same size as him. Too easy, thought Jasper, raising the net.
A small doubt niggled at the back of Jasper’s brain. The figure edged slightly to the right. Jasper knew that if he waited, it could all go wrong. He shook the doubt from his head, ran towards the figure and swung his net.
The next thing Jasper knew, his legs were kicked out from underneath him and he thumped onto the floor. Not exactly how monster-hunting was
meant to go. At least I’ve got the monster, thought Jasper. He grabbed the torch from his hunt belt and switched it on.
‘Felix?’ Jasper whispered. His friend stood tangled in the net.
‘Where are we?’ asked Felix.
Jasper shook his head. ‘We’re in a test, aren’t we? But what are you doing here? You’re not meant to be here, are you?’ He shivered and pulled his hood up. It was cold.
‘Why am I in a net?’ Felix scratched his head.
Jasper shrugged and shone the torch around the room. Where are we?
Jasper could feel an idea trying to burst through his skull, desperately wanting to be heard.
He shone the torch directly in Felix’s eyes.
Felix blinked and looked around the room, as if trying to get his bearings. Jasper saw something purple flash inside Felix’s ear, then disappear.
He felt a tingle of excitement in the tips of his fingers. Without really knowing why, he tackled Felix to the ground.
Felix struggled hopelessly in the net.
‘Stay still!’ yelled Jasper.
He grabbed the ear plunger – which looked like a mini toilet-plunger – from his hunt belt and shoved it roughly over Felix’s ear. He couldn’t shake the feeling that if he kept going, something horrible was going to happen, but he forced his arms to pump the plunger up and down until … SCHLOP! He’d sucked a purple wormy thing right out of Felix’s ear.
And then Jasper knew exactly was happening.
They had been Monstered.
Felix and Jasper lay panting on the floor of the room.
Felix flicked the torchlight onto the large jar in his hand. ‘Skankbamboozlers,’ Felix muttered in disgust.
Two hairy, purple, worm-like monsters with horribly human faces peered out at them. They wagged their tails back and forth and laughed madly at the two boys.
‘Those! Inside our brains – ugh!’ Felix shivered.
‘We should have known,’ Jasper replied.
‘Sore eyes, fuzzy head, confusion. Do you think we failed?’
Felix shrugged. ‘We were Scrambled good.’
He gave the jar a vicious shake.
‘They must have got in through the headphones,’ Jasper added. He knew his class teacher Stenka wouldn’t let them live this down in a hurry. ‘We didn’t even wear our earplugs or nosepegs to block the inlets to the brain.’ Jasper pulled the unused plugs and pegs from his hunt belt with a hopeless expression.
‘But Sir Tavish said it was a test on Morphers!’
Felix glared at the Skankbamboozlers again. ‘And what’s with the lights?’ he murmured as he made a shadow bunny jump across the beam of the torch.
Usually, as soon as the test was finished, the lights would come on, the door would unlock, and a voice would come over the intercom telling you to ‘proceed to the exit’. But so far … nothing.
Felix froze, his shadow bunny caught in mid-hop. ‘Unless of course, the monsters have teamed up. Like Sir Tavish was going on about.’
Felix was staring at something directly behind Jasper.
Suddenly the lights not coming on made sense. The test wasn’t over.
‘The Morpher – it’s behind me, isn’t it?’ Jasper whispered.
Felix gulped.
Jasper turned around very slowly.
Four dark blue slits had appeared on the wall and were looking right at them.
‘Eyes!’ whispered Felix.
The walls of the room began to breathe. The paint turned from grey to a dark, moist red.
Jasper felt the torch fall from his fingertips and hit the ground – which had turned into a soft mound of muscle.
There wasn’t a monster in the room.
The monster was the room.
Jasper’s body suddenly buzzed with excitement. He gritted his teeth and charged. A long rope of muscle shot towards him. It whipped around his body and snatched him up into the air. The muscle tightened around his chest. He could hardly breathe.
Felix pulled hard on Jasper’s legs, trying to free him. ‘What’s its weakness?’ he screamed desperately.
Every single monster, no matter how nasty and horrible, had a weakness. And knowing it was a monster-hunter’s best weapon.
‘I was hoping you’d tell me!’ gasped Jasper. He racked his brain, desperately trying to think which monster could morph into a room.
The monster tightened its grip around Jasper’s chest. His ribcage was being crushed. It hurt so much that his eyes welled up with tears. He hoped Felix couldn’t see the fat tear he felt rolling down his cheek.
The tear splatted softly onto the floor. Suddenly, the monster-room began to shake, as if an earthquake had hit. The walls and floor of the monster-room quickly hardened, and bits of the roof began to rain down on top of Jasper and Felix.
A strange wail came from deep inside the monster-room. The shaking stopped. There was complete silence.
Jasper’s torch lay on the floor nearby, its beam shining on the Skankbamboozlers, which were cackling in their jar on the cracked floor.
The muscle binding Jasper shook once more, then broke and crumbled to dust. Jasper crashed down to the ground.
Felix and Jasper looked at each other.
Tears, Jasper thought to himself. That was one weakness he wouldn’t forget in a hurry.
The lights came on, and an exit sign lit up over the door. ‘Please proceed to the exit,’ a voice ordered.
They didn’t need to be told twice.
3
The hall was buzzing with excited chatter. That had not been a normal test. It was much harder than usual.
Jasper and Felix sat with a group of dejected-looking kids from their class.
‘Stupid piece-of-rubbish Skankbamboozlers,’ Felix muttered.
Rumour had it that the test was actually the pre-Hunt exam. Jasper really hoped the rumour was wrong – it was more luck than skill that had got them through the test.
The students who scored the highest on the pre-Hunt exam would be picked to go on a Hunt. A real Hunt, on the trail of wild monsters. And, of course, going on a Hunt meant going to the outside world. No teachers, no prefects – it would be just them and the monsters. Jasper was excited just thinking about it.
A bunch of surly looking prefects dressed in camouflage gear patrolled up and down the hall, handing out penalty points to anyone who gave them even the slightest excuse. The head prefect, Bruno, was keeping particularly close to Jasper’s table. Bruno took great pleasure in punishing anyone he could lay his hands on, and for some reason he especially liked tormenting Jasper and his friends.
All the kids in Jasper’s class wanted to go on a Hunt. But Saffy was desperate to go on one. She was convinced that once she was back in the outside world, she’d be able to escape Monstrum House for good.
Not that she had anywhere she wanted to escape to. Jasper knew that Saffy wasn’t interested in going home. She didn’t get on very well with her parents and had been shipped around to heaps of different schools before landing at Monstrum House. But it was a matter of pride. She wanted to escape, just to prove that she could. Saffy had been nicknamed Houdini for being able to break out of any school. Monstrum House was the only school so far to beat her, and Saffy did not like being beaten.
But if the test had really been the pre-Hunt exam, then Saffy was in trouble too. It looked as though she had done just as badly as Felix and Jasper. Her test partner, Callum, had ended up in the school hospital because his foot had morphed into an apple tree. Having a partner hospitalised really didn’t look good on your score sheet.
‘At least he likes apples,’ Saffy kept saying, almost to herself.
‘QUIET!’ Bruno bellowed.
The chatter in the hall dropped to a soft muttering as Stenka marched into the hall, followed by the other first-year teachers.
Stenka glared at the students until absolute silence had fallen. Jasper fought the urge to do something funny to break the silence. He knew from experience that Stenka wasn�
�t amused by his jokes. And nothing ever seemed quite so funny after being sent to a monster-infested punishment room, or made to run the penalty course every night for a week.
‘For months we have been preparing you for the pre-Hunt exam,’ said Stenka slowly.
Jasper squirmed lower in his seat and dropped his gaze.
‘So who can explain why all your results are so POOR?’ Stenka exploded. Every student in the room jumped.
‘Why didn’t anyone tell us it was the exam?’ one boy muttered.
Stenka turned to him, her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. She snapped her fingers and two grinning prefects dragged the boy out of the hall. Jasper didn’t want to know what the poor guy’s punishment would be.
Stenka turned back to the rest of the students. ‘Any other questions?’ she asked sweetly, before continuing. ‘We expected at least half of you to be going on your first Hunt in the coming weeks. Instead, based on your results, only two pairs demonstrated the bare minimum required.’
Felix looked sheepishly at Jasper. ‘Guess we didn’t make it then,’ he whispered.
‘SILENCE!’ Stenka hissed, taking a menacing step towards Felix. Felix yelped and clamped his lips together.
Stenka’s icy gaze fell on Jasper. ‘Jasper McPhee, Felix Brown and Saffron Dominguez – report to my office immediately. As for the rest of you …’ She nodded to Bruno, then turned on her heel and clipped out of the hall.
Before Jasper, Felix and Saffy even had a chance to stand, Stenka’s mohawk swung back around the doorway. ‘I SAID IMMEDIATELY!’
Jasper, Felix and Saffy jumped to their feet and followed Stenka out of the hall. Jasper noticed the prefects smirking at them as they made their way through the doors, and Bruno wore the nastiest smirk of all.
4
Stenka led the way through the maze of corridors. Jasper had a pretty good sense of direction, but he had already decided that it was impossible to keep track of where the Monstrum House offices were.
‘Last time I was sent to Stenka’s office I left a trail of breadcrumbs behind me,’ Saffy whispered as they trailed behind Stenka. ‘When I tried to follow the crumbs back, they only led around in circles, and I ended up back at her office. She was waiting for me with a dust pan and brush.’
