The Curse of Fogsham Farm

by Jennifer Gray

  ‘Of course, darling,’ the countess agreed, ‘although I have to warn you Ichabod is rather gooey. Does that matter?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Thaddeus smirked. ‘The gooier the better.’ He outlined his idea.

  ‘That’s horrible, darling!’ the countess commended him. ‘How clever of you!’

  ‘’Orrible but ingenious!’ Kebab Claude agreed.

  ‘Yeah, not bad,’ Tiny Tony Tiddles said grudgingly, ‘for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Thaddeus said. He banged his stick on the table. ‘This time tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen, we shall be feasting on fowl,’ he boasted, ‘with a generous serving of rooster blood: Professor Rooster blood, to be precise. Now get me Granny Wishbone. I have a job for her and Ichabod.’

  That same evening at Fogsham Farm, Amy, Boo and Ruth were in the leisure centre shed saying goodnight to James Pond.

  Amy regarded the duck without sympathy. Apart from the fact that his head was still bandaged he looked fine to her. He was certainly eating plenty. She and Ruth and Boo had been running about all day getting him snacks and drinks. That was when they weren’t banging nails into the chicken sheds. Amy felt exhausted. It was hard work being a chicken warrior, especially with James Pond bossing you around all the time.

  The three chickens hung about while Rossiter Brown took James Pond’s pulse. It was Rossiter Brown’s idea that the leisure centre shed should act as a temporary hospital. At the moment the only patient was James Pond, but Amy was secretly worried that Rossiter thought there might be more casualties before their mission was over.

  ‘How are you feeling now?’ Rossiter asked.

  ‘Not too bad,’ James Pond replied. ‘I’ve just got a bit of a headache. I’ll be fine in the morning.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with him!’ Amy muttered to her friends. ‘He’s putting it on to get attention.’

  ‘We don’t know he’s putting it on, Amy,’ Ruth reasoned. ‘Head injuries can be very nasty. And Pond’s had two from the same Zimmer frame in the past twelve hours. That can’t be good.’

  ‘I’m telling you, he is!’ Amy argued back. ‘He should be out there slaying Fangula, not lying about in bed!’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now,’ Boo sighed. ‘Rossiter won’t let him out until tomorrow morning. And anyway, it’s too late to slay Fangula. It got dark ages ago.’

  Amy glanced at the shed window. Boo was right. She’d barely noticed but the day had slipped past. Fangula was probably already out of her coffin prowling around somewhere on the moor with Granny Wishbone and Ichabod Comb. There was no choice but to wait.

  ‘We’d better get going,’ Rossiter said, ‘before the humans turn off their lights.’ He gave James Pond some green leaves to chew. ‘Eat these. They’re herbs. They’ll help with the headache. Don’t be too long,’ he told the chickens, letting himself out of the shed.

  ‘We won’t,’ Amy promised.

  James Pond munched the herbs and lay back on his straw bed. ‘Did you check all the sheds for holes?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Amy wearily. ‘We’ve checked the walls and the windows and the doors. They’re all fine.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ James Pond yawned, ‘you hens hit the hay. Make sure you nail up the door when you leave.’

  The chickens said goodnight and filed out of the shed. Amy was glad of the faint light coming from the farmhouse. It should keep Fangula away for the time being.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ Boo asked nervously.

  Amy listened hard. ‘It sounds like pigs,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the granny chickens,’ said Ruth. ‘They’re snoring again.’

  ‘At least we don’t have to listen to them tonight!’ Amy said. She was looking forward to snuggling down with the other chickens in the sleeping coop. She thought she might plug her ears with straw to make sure she got a good night’s sleep.

  ‘Have you got the hammer and nails, Ruth?’ Boo asked.

  ‘Check.’ Ruth removed them from the Emergency Chicken Pack.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Amy volunteered. She took the hammer and bashed in three nails as hard as she could. It was the sort of thing she was used to doing at Perrin’s Farm before she became a chicken warrior. The coops there always needed repairing. ‘That should hold Fangula and her zombies.’ She threw her shoulder against the door. It didn’t budge. She stepped back, satisfied. ‘Nothing can get in there tonight.’ She grinned. ‘Or out!’ She gave a whoop of joy. ‘Which means we can forget Pond for a while and go and have some fun with the other chickens!’

  ‘Hooray!’ Boo and Ruth cheered.

  ‘Can we play Twister?’ Boo asked.

  ‘No,’ said Amy, ‘you always win that. And there isn’t room. Let’s play wing wrestling.’

  ‘But you always win that!’ Boo said.

  ‘What about chess?’ Ruth suggested.

  ‘Boring!’ Boo and Amy said together.

  The three chickens scuttled off to the sleeping coop. They were so busy arguing happily about what game they were going to play that they didn’t see the three members of the Pigeon-Poo Gang perched on the window ledge of the farm, watching them.

  Thaddeus E. Fox waited until the Pigeon-Poo Gang returned from their watch. He sat patiently while their leader traced out a map on the floor of the dungeon with his claw.

  ‘Pond’s in the hospital shed,’ the pigeon told Thaddeus. ‘The chickens are in the sleeping coop with Rossiter and the Fogsham hens.’

  ‘What about the grannies?’ Thaddeus asked. Granny Wishbone had told him about her cronies and their outing to the Chicken Zimmer Frame Throwing Championships. The grannies now formed an important part of his brilliantly evil plan.

  ‘In the juice shack, asleep.’

  ‘Good work,’ Thaddeus said. It was time to put his plan into action. ‘Get Wishbone and Ichabod ready,’ he told Kebab Claude. He took his fob watch off and placed it on the table. ‘Bring them to the farm in two hours. I’ll be waiting by the wall.’ He turned to the countess. ‘Do you have any writing paper?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course, darling! It’s in the kitchen.’ The countess led the way along the corridor and pushed open another door.

  Thaddeus looked round the kitchen carefully. Once Kebab Claude got the fire going in the grate, Thaddeus decided, it would do very well for the feast. They could keep the prisoners in the dungeon until they were ready to eat them.

  ‘Here we are!’ A thick oak table rested in the middle of the kitchen floor. It was covered with Ichabod’s various cooking ingredients including bat wings, dried mice and what looked very much like hedgehog brains. The countess swept them onto the floor. She produced a thick cream piece of paper, a quill pen and an ancient bottle of ink from a drawer.

  ‘Why don’t you do it, Countess?’ Thaddeus suggested. ‘As you have such beautiful handwriting?’

  ‘Very well,’ the countess dipped the pen in the bottle of ink. ‘Tell me what to put.’

  Thaddeus murmured his instructions. When the countess had finished writing he waited until he was sure the ink was dry, rolled up the piece of paper, removed the top of his silver cane and slid the scroll into the hollow tube inside. Then he picked up the cane and made his way silently out of the kitchen to the steps of Bloodsucker Hall. He raced through the grounds, under the gate and across the moor until he reached the dry stone wall that surrounded Fogsham Farm. Choosing a spot closest to the chicken sheds, there, very quietly, he began to dig.

  SCRATCH! SCRATCH! SCRATCH!

  Inside the hospital shed James Pond woke with a start. His eyes went to the door. It was still firmly closed.

  SCRATCH! SCRATCH! SCRATCH!

  He listened carefully. The scratching was coming from beneath his bed. Something was trying to get in through the floor.

  BOOMPH!

  James Pond felt himself being catapulted through the air. He landed beak first on the hard floor of the shed. He raised his head groggily.

  ‘Time for your medicine, M
r Pond,’ a voice screeched.

  James Pond sat up. It must be another one of the hens from the sleeping coop, come to check up on him, he thought. Funny that Rossiter hadn’t mentioned that they had a system of tunnels under the sheds. Quite clever for chickens, he decided. They were usually as dim as dodos. ‘I’ve already had my medicine,’ he said. ‘Rossiter gave it to me.’

  ‘All right, your bath, then,’ came the voice.

  ‘I don’t want a bath!’ James Pond said crossly. ‘I want to go to sleep.’

  ‘Doctor’s orders!’ the voice insisted.

  ‘What doctor?’ James Pond said. Rossiter hadn’t said anything about a doctor.

  ‘Doctor Ichabod,’ screeched the voice.

  ‘Look, what is this?’ James Pond reached for a torch. He switched it on. The beam of light swept the shed floor. He could see a raised floorboard where the hen had entered. The hen was standing beside it. James Pond pulled a face. Her feet were covered in knobbly corns.

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’ the voice yelled.

  The feet set off at a brisk trot towards him. James Pond felt the torch being knocked out of his wing. ‘Ouch!’ he exclaimed. The beam of light shone uselessly into the corner of the shed.

  ‘Doctor Ichabod doesn’t like too much light when he operates,’ the hen continued. ‘Do you, Doctor?’

  ‘No,’ a second voice grunted.

  ‘Operates!’ James Pond repeated. ‘What are you talking about? I’m fine.’

  ‘You are now,’ the hen rasped. ‘But you won’t be when Doctor Ichabod has finished with you.’

  James Pond felt frantically for the torch. His outstretched wing made contact with the handle. He managed to swing it round so that the light illuminated the shed. He blinked. Two figures loomed over him. He recognised one of them from the fight at The Bloodless Hen. Only she looked different from the last time he’d seen her. More ugly and wizened, if that were possible, and more like she’d just died from the bubonic plague.

  ‘Granny Wishbone!’ James Pond gasped.

  Granny Wishbone was covered in boils. Her milky eyes were crazed with red, like raspberry ripple ice cream. She had fang marks on the side of her neck. ‘That’s right, Pond!’ she cackled. ‘Meet my new friend, Ichabod.’

  ‘Hello.’ Ichabod Comb stepped forwards. He had a doctor’s coat on. A stethoscope swung from his neck. Goo dripped from the end.

  ‘Hold it right there!’ James Pond ordered. He reached for Vladimir’s Vampire Slayer. ‘Or I’ll shoot.’

  ‘Be our guests!’ Granny Wishbone chortled.

  PHUT!

  The pencil hit Granny Wishbone in the eye. She pulled it out. James Pond gasped. Her eyeball was on the end of it!

  Granny Wishbone plucked the eyeball off and stuck it back in the socket. ‘Ha ha, you missed!’ she screeched. ‘Anyway, you can’t kill us with that, only the countess!’ she swiped the holder out of James Pond’s wing. ‘And she’s at Bloodsucker Hall preparing for a feast with her new friends.’

  ‘What new friends?’

  ‘A very posh gentleman fox,’ said Granny Wishbone, counting them off on her fingers, ‘a smelly poodle, a cat in a hat and some tasty-looking pigeons.’

  ‘The MOST WANTED Club!’ James Pond gasped. ‘You’ll never get away with this!’

  ‘Yes, we will,’ said Granny Wishbone. ‘Seize him, Ichabod!’

  ‘Yes, ma’am!’ Ichabod Comb raised his mangy wings and grabbed James Pond by the feet.

  James Pond kicked out at him. ‘Let me go!’

  A few more of Ichabod’s feathers fell off. ‘Shan’t.’ Ichabod Comb held him fast while Granny Wishbone tied a bandage round James Pond’s ankles.

  ‘What do you want?’ James Pond struggled frantically.

  ‘Information,’ Granny Wishbone said. ‘Where’s Professor Rooster?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ James Pond said. ‘And even if I did I wouldn’t tell you.’

  Ichabod Comb tied his ankles to the door handle. He grabbed James Pond by the throat.

  ‘We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,’ Granny Wishbone screeched. ‘Either you quack or Ichabod goos you.’ She pulled the stethoscope towards James Pond’s beak. A drop of goo quivered on the end. It dropped with a soft plop on James Pond’s bow tie.

  ‘No!’ James Pond twisted away. ‘You won’t get anything from me!’

  ‘Hmm,’ Granny Wishbone’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re harder to crack than a hen’s tooth. Which gives me an idea!’ She leaned towards him and removed her false teeth.

  ‘What are you doing?’ James Pond struggled.

  ‘The bite of a vampire is swift,’ Granny Wishbone said. ‘But being gummed to death by a zombie chicken is something else altogether.’

  Her gums closed around his throat.

  ‘Noooooo!’ James Pond screamed. ‘I’ll tell you anything. Just get off me!’

  Granny Wishbone sat back. She put her teeth back in. ‘So,’ she said in a soft voice, ‘keep quacking, duck. Where’s Rooster?’

  At his top-secret location somewhere on the Dudley Estate, Professor Rooster sat at his desk surrounded by a mountain of work. He couldn’t concentrate on any of it. He was worried. It was two days since he’d heard from his elite chicken squad and there was no word from Rossiter Brown either. The Professor switched on his laptop and tried again to reach Chicken HQ. He had been trying all day, but with no joy. There had been no reply from Amy, Boo or Ruth.

  The screen fizzled into life. He tapped at some keys. Chicken HQ came into view. The professor could see the inside of the three potting sheds with the chickens’ beds at one end and the gadgets cupboard at the other. But there was no sign of the chickens.

  Amy, Boo and Ruth had still not returned from Fogsham Farm.

  He sighed. Perhaps it had been a mistake to send them on the vampire mission. They were very young. And they had only ever completed one mission before. Perhaps he should have got help from Poultry Patrol: James Pond, for instance. Pond was one of the best agents he knew. He was one of the very few birds the Professor trusted to keep a secret. Professor Rooster’s wings hovered over the laptop. Then he typed in a secret code and spoke into the microphone.

  ‘This is Professor Rooster,’ he said. ‘Is that Poultry Patrol?’

  ‘Yes,’ a voice came back, ‘can I help?’

  ‘Is Pond available?’ the professor asked. ‘I need him at once.’

  ‘Pond?’ the operator sounded surprised. ‘But he’s already booked out on a mission under your name.’

  ‘What?’ Professor Rooster frowned. ‘But I don’t understand.’

  ‘He called in a couple of days ago,’ the operator told him, ‘to say he was delayed. He said he’d agreed to help your hens with a secret mission: something about a vampire mink … I assumed you knew.’

  ‘I see …’ Professor Rooster’s face was grim. ‘Thank you.’ He ended the call.

  Pond was helping his elite chicken squad already? Professor Rooster felt betrayed. The chickens hadn’t said anything about getting James Pond to help them. And Pond hadn’t told him either.

  Professor Rooster got ready for bed. He brushed his teeth and preened his feathers half-heartedly. He massaged his bad leg – still sore from when Thaddeus E. Fox had once caught him in his powerful jaws – and lay down on his straw pallet. Tomorrow he would find out from his bird spies what was going on at Bleakley Fogsham. And then he would do some serious thinking. He needed a team he could trust. And if that meant getting a new elite combat squad and sending Amy, Boo and Ruth home, he would do it. He was fond of them, of course, and they had done their best. He was glad they had managed to defeat Fox and his gang, at least. But if he couldn’t trust them, they would have to go. He closed his eyes.

  Just then the door flew open.

  Professor Rooster sat up with a start. Standing before him was a small black and white cat and a large French poodle.

  ‘Tiddles!’ the Professor gasped. ‘Claude! But how did you …?’

&n
bsp; ‘Pond quacked,’ Tiny Tony Tiddles said shortly. ‘He told us where your secret hideout was. Your old pal Thaddeus sent me and Claude to chicken-nap you. Claude, give me the sack.’

  Kebab Claude was helping himself to a drink of water from the professor’s water trough. He shook the drool from his mouth and untied the sack from around his neck. ‘’Ere you are,’ he said.

  Tiny Tony Tiddles opened it. ‘The Countess von Fangula is waiting for you at Bloodsucker Hall, Professor Rooster,’ he purred. ‘She’s getting kinda thirsty for rooster blood.’

  The professor drew himself up to his full height. He was taller than Tiny Tony. ‘What if I refuse to go with you?’ he said.

  ‘That ain’t an option, Professor,’ Tiny Tony held his ground. ‘Hold him, Claude.’

  Professor Rooster felt two hefty paws clasp his wings from behind. He tried to struggle, but it was hopeless. He felt himself being bundled into the sack and borne away into the darkness.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-dooooooooooooooo!’

  ‘I wish Rossiter wouldn’t make such a racket!’ Amy complained.

  It was morning at Fogsham Farm. Rossiter Brown had gone outside to wake up the humans and remind them to leave the chickens some grain. He was crowing loudly.

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have stayed up so late playing games,’ Ruth yawned. ‘We slept in.’

  ‘You’ve got to admit it was fun, though,’ Amy said. Because they couldn’t agree which game to play, in the end the chickens had played all the games they could think of. They’d even made room for Twister, which the chicks enjoyed.

  ‘How come everyone else is still asleep?’ Boo said blearily.

  All the other hens were still slumbering peacefully in the hay.

  ‘They’re used to it, I suppose,’ Amy said. She pulled a few strands of hay out of her ears: Rossiter’s crowing was so loud her earplugs didn’t seem to make any difference. She got up and stretched. It was quite cramped in the sleeping coop. She needed to stretch her legs. And they still had a mission to complete. Or, at least, James Pond did. ‘Let’s go and wake up old lazy-bones,’ she said. ‘Fangula will be back in her coffin by now.’