Goldfish from Beyond the Grave #4

by Sam Hay; Illustrated by Simon Cooper

  “Okay, okay,” Dan said. “Come upstairs and I’ll show you how it works.”

  “Good plan!” called a fishy voice from Matt’s glass. “That’s more like it!”

  “This is how you turn on the camera. It’s got a microphone built in, so you’ll be able to hear if anyone sneaks inside. And this is how you see the picture on the laptop . . .”

  “Wow! This is a good camera,” said Joe, looking closely at the fish tank.

  Dan nodded. “You can take the laptop into any room you like—but be careful with it,” he added, handing it over reluctantly. “And don’t take it into the bathroom, obviously. I had to save up forever to buy that thing! If anything happens to it, you’re dead meat!”

  Joe swallowed hard. He definitely didn’t want to get on Dan’s bad side.

  “Nothing’s happening,” Matt said with a sigh, peering at the laptop screen.

  They were sitting in the twins’ bedroom. They’d started off in Jane and Frank’s bedroom, but Aunt Jane had chased them out when she’d appeared to reapply her lipstick. Then they’d tried the guest room, but Matt’s granddad was already in there having a nap. So that only left the twins’ room. They’d been watching the screen for ten minutes, and so far none of the fish had done anything remotely interesting.

  Matt puffed out his cheeks. “I don’t know why people have fish. They’re so boring!”

  But Joe was grappling with another problem. He still hadn’t thought of a way to tempt the fish killer to strike again. He was pretty sure it was one of the kids. But unless he could get them to do it again, the stakeout was a complete waste of time.

  Joe stared at the screen as a fish swam across the tank and glared into the camera. It was Fizz. Joe sighed. He was running out of time. Matt’s parents had promised to drive him home by six, and it was already five o’clock.

  “There’s so much stuff in here!” said Matt, knocking over a row of teddy bears that were arranged on one of the beds.

  There were baskets full of toys, a large box filled with dress-up clothes, a giant set of drawers groaning with paper and pens and sparkly stickers . . .

  “Sarah’s room looked kind of like this when we were little.” Joe grinned. “It’s horrible!” He looked at the kitten-shaped lampshade and the two pairs of fluffy puppy slippers poking out from under the beds. It was truly gruesome!

  “Sleeping in here would give me a headache!” Matt said. “It’s like being trapped inside a stick of cotton candy.”

  Just then there was a shout from downstairs. “Maaaattttt!”

  “Oh no!” he groaned. “They’ve found us! Quick, Joe, hide the laptop.”

  Joe shoved it under Lolly’s bed, just as they thundered into the room.

  Billy was at the front. He’d found a pirate hat from somewhere and a pointy plastic cutlass, which he waved at Joe. “Give me your treasure or I’ll make you walk the plank!”

  “Yeah, yeah, very funny,” said Matt. “Why don’t you all go back and play in the sandbox again.”

  Billy’s answer was to turn his cutlass on Matt and bare his teeth.

  “My dolly needs another bath,” said Lily, plopping her scribble-faced baby into Joe’s lap.

  “And I need to go wee-wee . . . ,” added Lolly.

  “Give me your treasure, or I’ll make you walk the plank!” said Billy again, even louder this time, poking Matt with the cutlass.

  “Hey!” said Matt, batting it away. “I haven’t got any treasure!” Then a sly smile spread across his face. “How about a real treasure hunt, though?” he said.

  “What?” Joe frowned. The last thing he wanted to do was join in another little kids’ game. “But, Matt,” he whispered. “We can’t play games—we’re supposed to be doing the stakeout, remember?”

  “Don’t worry,” Matt whispered back. “We won’t have to do anything! But these guys will—somewhere else!”

  Joe grinned. He understood Matt’s idea.

  “What kind of treasure hunt?” asked Billy, giving his cousin another poke with the cutlass.

  Matt shrugged. “You have to go and see how many things you can find that start with the letter P.”

  The kids looked at him blankly.

  “P for pirate hat!” added Matt, grabbing Billy’s hat off his head.

  “Hey!” he growled. “Give that back!”

  “Or this,” said Joe, picking up a pink fluffy pig that was lying on Lolly’s bed.

  “Or this?” shouted Lolly, holding up her pink pajamas.

  “Exactly!” said Matt.

  Then suddenly Joe had another idea. A brilliant idea. An idea that could possibly trap a fish killer!

  “P is too easy,” he said. “Let’s choose a different letter. How about F?”

  “I like P better,” wailed Lily. “P for pink.”

  “No!” said Joe firmly. “The letter is F.”

  “F for fork,” said Matt. “And face paint and . . . false teeth!”

  “And fangs,” said Billy.

  “Great!” said Joe. “That’s cool, Billy. But there’s lots more stuff that starts with the letter F, too—things like flannel, flower, films . . . and FISH net and FISH food!” he said, looking around to see if any of the children looked especially interested in the word fish. But no one seemed to have noticed . . .

  For a second, all the kids looked at one another, and then there was pandemonium. They were racing and chasing around the room searching for stuff beginning with F.

  “Hey!” shouted Matt, fighting to be heard over the din. “You get extra points if you find stuff in other rooms!”

  “Downstairs!” yelled Lily, and the kids stampeded out of the room like a herd of wildebeests.

  “I’m not sure that game was such a great idea,” sighed Matt as he flipped open Dan’s laptop. “All the kids will probably head straight for Dan’s room to dig around for stuff.”

  Joe shrugged. “They all went downstairs. Look—there’s absolutely nothing happening in Dan’s room.”

  “Yeah,” said Matt glumly. “I wish there was, though . . . None of those fish look the slightest bit hungry!”

  Joe sat down on one of the beds. As he did, he spotted the picture book again—the one with the smiley fish on the front.

  “‘Little Bubble’s Big Adventure,’” he read out loud. He reached for it and turned a few pages. “‘Little Bubble liked to go on adventures . . .’”

  Matt grinned. “What’s this? Story time with Joe Edmunds? It’s not my bedtime, you know.”

  Joe ignored him and kept on reading. “‘When Maisie was cleaning out the fishbowl, Little Bubble would jump into the sink and disappear down the drain, looking for excitement . . .’”

  “Yeah, yeah, very nice, Joe!”

  “‘One day, Little Bubble went down the pipes on an amazing underground adventure, all the way to mermaid land . . .’”

  “Enough, Joe,” Matt groaned.

  But Joe didn’t need Matt to tell him—he had read enough. He now had a pretty good idea why Fizz had ended up down the toilet. All he had to do was catch the culprit red-handed.

  Suddenly, Matt shouted, “There’s someone in there!”

  Joe crouched down to get a better look at the screen. A little girl had appeared in the room. Fizz was going crazy, swimming around in circles.

  “Hello, Little Bubble,” she said. “I’m looking for things beginning with F. Can you help me?”

  “It’s one of the twins!” whispered Matt.

  “Which one?”

  Matt peered closer. “I can’t tell. We should go and get her out of Dan’s room.”

  “No,” said Joe. “Wait a minute. Let’s see what she does . . .”

  They watched as she picked up the fish food. Then she got a hold of the fish net. She looked like she was about to leave, when suddenly she t
wisted back to look in the tank.

  “Little Bubble, want to go on another adventure?” she asked with a smile.

  “What’s she talking about?” whispered Matt. “Oh no! Surely she doesn’t think that silly story is for real . . .”

  Fizz was flapping around the tank, shouting, “It was her! It was her! Murderer!”

  “Come on, Little Bubble, Lolly will take you for another adventure.”

  Matt’s mouth opened in horror. “No!” he shouted. But Lolly had already flipped open the lid of the tank and lowered the net into the water.

  “Come on, Little Bubble . . .”

  “Quick!” shouted Joe. “Stop her!”

  The boys raced down the corridor, just in time to see Lolly leaving Dan’s room and heading to the bathroom, clutching the little fish net in her hand.

  “Stop!” yelled Matt.

  Lolly turned around. “Little Bubble is going on an adventure to mermaid land.”

  Joe bent down and tried to take the net from her.

  “No, Joe!” She scowled, holding it firmly against her chest.

  “Come on,” said Joe. “Hand it over!”

  Lolly shook her head and held the net tighter.

  “Please! Give it to me!” Joe yelped.

  “Let go, Lolly,” said Matt sternly. He stepped toward her and held out his hand. “Give it to me, now!”

  Lolly made a face, then reluctantly handed the net over. Inside was a gasping goldfish.

  “Quick, Joe, put it back in the tank.”

  As Joe headed back to Dan’s room, he heard Lolly cry, “Give me Bubble back!”

  “At least he’s still breathing,” growled Fizz as Joe put the fish carefully back in the tank, “unlike me!”

  When Joe returned to the landing, he found Matt crouched down in front of Lolly.

  “Dan’s going to be so mad at you!”

  “What’s going on here?” It was Aunt Jane—Lolly’s mom. “All my forks have gone missing,” she said in an angry voice, “and half my flower bed’s been chopped to pieces. And your uncle Sid says his false teeth have been stolen! Do you boys know anything about it?”

  Joe looked at his shoes. Matt bit his lip. “Sorry, Aunt Jane,” he muttered. “We were doing a treasure hunt for the kids, and we got them to look for things beginning with F.”

  “Fish food!” Lolly beamed, showing the little box she’d picked up in Dan’s room.

  “Have you been inside your brother’s bedroom again?” said her mom sternly.

  Lolly nodded. “And I wanted Bubble to go on another adventure . . .”

  “Excuse me?”

  Matt sighed. “It was Lolly who killed Dan’s fish,” he said. “She wanted the goldfish to have adventures like the ones in her book, Little Bubble’s Big Adventure, so she flushed it down the toilet. She was just about to do the same to another one when we stopped her.”

  “Oh, Lolly,” said her mom. “Goldfish can’t really go off on adventures. They die if you flush them down the drain.”

  The little girl looked at Matt, and then at her mom. Her lip began to wobble, and she burst into tears.

  “I’ll just go and check on the fish,” said Joe.

  “Ha!” Fizz growled from inside the tank. “The murderer has been unmasked!”

  Joe scowled at the fish. “Well, at least the rest of the tank is safe now. Lolly won’t be flushing away any of the others.”

  “Lucky them!” snapped Fizz. He swam around the tank for a bit, glaring at the other fish, then he stopped and stared out at Joe. “I think it’s time I was going. Now I know who killed me, I feel sort of . . . peaceful.”

  “Oh . . . right . . .” Joe tried to hide his relief.

  He definitely wouldn’t miss Fizz!

  “Bye, Joe.”

  And he vanished.

  Just then, Joe heard a noise at the door.

  “Who were you talking to?” Matt was at the doorway with a suspicious look on his face. “Were you just talking to the fish tank?”

  “Oh, yeah. I . . . really like the guppy.”

  “Well, hopefully now it’ll be safe from the phantom fish killer!” Matt said. “Though Dan’s going to be mad at Lolly when he finds out what really happened.”

  There was a shout from downstairs. “Matt! Joe! We’re leaving now!”

  “I suppose I’d better go turn off the webcam,” said Matt. “It’s still recording!”

  “What?” Joe turned pale.

  “Yeah—Dan put the camera on ‘record,’ in case we wanted to take a break.”

  “So it’s recording everything I’ve been saying in here?” said Joe nervously.

  Matt nodded.

  “I’ll go and turn it off!” said Joe, dodging past his friend. And I’d better delete everything it’s recorded, too! he thought.

  Matt’s parents were already in the car by the time they got downstairs.

  “Thanks for coming, boys,” said Uncle Frank. Lolly, who was holding his hand, gave them a sulky scowl.

  “I hope you enjoyed yourselves,” said Aunt Jane, who was carrying three forks and a napkin in her hands. “You’ve certainly kept the little ones amused!”

  Matt grinned, and Joe tried not to laugh.

  “Thanks, Aunt Jane,” said Matt.

  “Yeah, it was great!” added Joe. It was definitely good to have gotten rid of Fizz, at least.

  As Joe followed Matt to the car, something white and fluffy hopped past him and disappeared into the bushes.

  “What was that?” Joe gasped.

  “Mmm?” Matt peered out of the backseat. “I didn’t see anything.”

  Joe crouched down and peeked into the bushes, but whatever it was had gone. Joe was just about to go, when he noticed something odd on the ground. It was a trail of tiny green balls. Joe frowned. They looked kind of like . . .

  “Rabbit poop?”

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