I Don't Believe It, Archie!

by Andrew Norriss

  A DAVID FICKLING BOOK

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Andrew Norriss

  Jacket art and interior illustrations copyright © 2011 by Hannah Shaw

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of the Random House Group Ltd., London, in 2011.

  David Fickling Books and the colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Norriss, Andrew.

  I don’t believe it, Archie! / Andrew Norriss. —1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Strange things are always happening around Archie, but after he meets Cyd and makes friends with her, he finds these odd occurrences more enjoyable.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-98476-1

  [1. Serendipity—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: I do not believe it, Archie!

  PZ7.N7998Iaf 2012

  [Fic]—dc22

  2011003936

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  I dedicate this book to all those children who live

  quiet, uneventful lives where nothing much out

  of the ordinary ever seems to happen.

  If you don’t know already, let me tell you how lucky you are …

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. On Monday

  2. On Tuesday

  3. On Wednesday

  4. On Thursday

  5. On Friday

  6. On Saturday

  7. On Sunday

  On Monday, when Archie had been sent out to post a letter, something rather odd happened.

  He was halfway down the hill that led to the post office when he heard a rumbling noise, turned round, and saw a piano coming down the middle of the road. There was nobody with it. It was just a large upright piano, trundling down the hill all on its own.

  Archie was surprised, though probably not as surprised as you or I would be, because odd things happened to Archie every day. Some very odd things. As you will see.

  While he watched, the piano slowed down, veered slightly over to one side of the road, and then stopped.

  When he went over for a closer look, he heard a voice.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ said the voice. ‘What am I supposed to do now?’

  Looking round the end of the piano, Archie saw a girl about his own age, sitting in the front passenger seat of a small car.

  ‘I’m stuck, aren’t I!’ said the girl. ‘How am I supposed to get out?’

  The car she was sitting in only had two doors and it had been parked so that one of them was right up against a lamp post. The other one was now blocked by the piano.

  ‘Could you move it or something?’ asked the girl.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Archie. He was not very big and it was quite a heavy piano.

  ‘Well, could you go and tell my mum what’s happened?’ asked the girl. She pointed to a house on the other side of the road. ‘She’s in there. Number sixteen.’

  Archie thought about it. ‘You want me to go in there …’

  ‘Just tell anyone you see that Cyd is trapped in a car,’ said the girl. ‘They all know me.’

  ‘Right,’ said Archie. ‘OK …’

  He crossed the road, walked up a path, and found the front door of number sixteen was open. In the hallway inside, a woman was talking on the phone.

  ‘But he promised to have that piano delivered by ten o’clock!’ she was saying. ‘How am I supposed to give singing lessons without a piano …? Well, could you find out, please …? Thank you!’

  She put down the phone and saw Archie in the doorway. ‘What do you want?’ she asked impatiently.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ said Archie, ‘but Cyd asked me to tell you—’

  ‘Sid?’ the woman frowned. ‘You have a message from Sid? Is it about my piano?’

  ‘Well,’ Archie hesitated, ‘I suppose it could be.’ He pointed outside. ‘You see, the piano out there is blocking the—’

  ‘What is my piano doing in the middle of the road?’ interrupted the woman, staring out through the doorway.

  ‘Well …’ said Archie.

  ‘Oh, never mind!’ The woman had turned on her heel. ‘I’ll find someone to bring it inside.’ And she strode off down the hallway and was gone.

  Archie went back to the girl in the car. He thought she might like to know that someone was coming to move the piano, but he found when he got there that the girl had already got someone else to help.

  ‘I’m just going to push the car forward a bit,’ said an elderly man in a green raincoat, ‘so that your friend can get out. It won’t take a moment!’

  Archie stood out of the way on the pavement, while the man pushed the car. It rolled forward very easily and was soon at a point where Cyd could have opened either of the doors.

  ‘All right!’ said the man. ‘You can put the brake on now.’

  ‘Put it on what?’ asked the girl.

  The car, Archie noticed, was still rolling forward.

  ‘The brake!’ said the man. ‘The handle beside your seat. You need to pull it!’

  Archie could see the girl in the car reach for the brake handle and pull on it, but the car did not stop. It had got to a steep bit of the hill and was, if anything, going faster.

  ‘You have to pull it harder than that!’ shouted the man, running alongside the car. ‘Come on! Pull!’

  ‘I’m pulling it as hard as I can!’ the girl shouted back. ‘It’s not working!’

  She sounded frightened and Archie could see why. The car was still picking up speed and, directly in front of it, further down the road, was an enormous lorry. If the car crashed into it …

  The man in the green raincoat could see what might happen as well and, at the last minute, he pulled open the car door, leaped inside while the car was still moving and a second later it screeched to a halt just inches from the back of the lorry.

  Archie, watching, gave a sigh of relief. Or rather, half a sigh, because he could see that, although the car was no longer going to crash, something even worse was about to happen. The back of the lorry was tipping up and, before Archie could so much as shout a warning, there was a great roar and several tons of small stones poured out and engulfed the car. One moment there was a car with two people in it, the next it had disappeared under an enormous heap of gravel.

  Archie was already running down the pavement. He got there just in time to see the lorry driving away, while the car was completely buried.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he called, and was relieved to hear a faint reply.

  ‘Help!’ said a tiny voice. ‘Get help!’

  ‘All right!’ said Archie. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get someone!’

  He looked round.

  There were some men on the building site behind him who would probably be able to help, but even better, he noticed, there was a policeman walking down the road from the top of the hill. He would know what to do.

&nbs
p; Archie ran back up the road, to where the policeman was talking to a man in brown overalls.

  ‘You’ve lost a piano?’ the policeman was saying.

  ‘I was delivering it to number sixteen,’ said the man, ‘at the top of the hill. But the woman there said she hadn’t ordered any piano and—’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Archie, breathlessly.

  ‘Hang on a minute, lad,’ said the policeman. ‘One thing at a time.’ He turned back to the man in the brown overalls. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘Well, I went inside to phone the boss,’ said the man, ‘and when I came out the piano had gone! Just … vanished!’

  ‘Where’s my husband!’ An elderly woman in a knitted hat had come out of her house and was looking anxiously up and down the pavement. ‘What’s happened to my husband?’

  ‘Please!’ said the policeman. ‘I’m attending to this gentleman at the moment.’

  ‘But you don’t understand!’ said the woman in the knitted hat. ‘My husband said he’d wait for me here, and he’s disappeared! Where’s he gone!’

  ‘I think,’ said Archie, ‘that I might be able to—’

  ‘I told you to wait your turn,’ said the policeman, sharply. ‘I can only deal with one thing at a time and—’

  ‘Aaaaaagh!’ A woman in jeans and a T-shirt was running across the road. ‘Cyd!’ she screamed. ‘What’s happened to Cyd!’

  ‘Who?’ The policeman was beginning to look rather flustered.

  ‘My daughter! I left her out here in the car, and she’s gone!’ The woman looked wildly up and down the road. ‘She was sitting in the car right here and now she’s gone. Somebody’s stolen my daughter!’

  ‘It’s like the Bermuda Triangle, isn’t it?’ said the man in the brown overalls. ‘All these people and things disappearing!’ He looked at Archie. ‘I lost a piano!’

  ‘I know,’ said Archie. ‘And if someone would just listen to me—’

  ‘I’m telling you for the last time,’ said the policeman, ‘just keep quiet until I’m ready, will you?’ He turned to the woman in jeans. ‘You say your daughter’s gone missing?’

  ‘And the car!’ said the woman. ‘The car’s gone too! Somebody’s driven off with her!’

  Archie’s father had always told him that it was rude to interrupt when other people were talking, but he thought, on this occasion, he had no choice.

  ‘YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME!’ he shouted. ‘BECAUSE I KNOW WHERE EVERYONE IS! I KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENED!’

  There was a brief moment of silence.

  ‘You know where the girl is?’ said the policeman.

  ‘And my husband?’ said the woman in the knitted hat.

  ‘And my piano?’ said the man in the brown overalls.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Archie. He turned to the woman in jeans and a T-shirt. ‘Your daughter, Cyd, is under those stones.’ He pointed down the hill to the pile of gravel.

  The woman went very pale and swayed slightly as if she was going to faint.

  ‘And if your husband was wearing a green raincoat …’ – Archie had turned to the elderly woman in the knitted hat – ‘… you’ll find he’s under there as well.’

  The elderly woman’s hands flew to her mouth and she gave a little cry.

  ‘You’re saying there’s two people buried under that pile of gravel?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘Yes,’ said Archie. ‘I think they’re all right – they’re in the car – but someone ought to dig them out before they run out of air and die.’

  The policeman didn’t move for a bit, then suddenly turned and started running down the hill, calling into his radio for backup while he ran. Both the women ran after him, and Archie was left with the man in the brown overalls.

  ‘So … is my piano under there as well?’ he asked, hopefully.

  ‘No,’ said Archie, ‘I think you’ll find your piano is in there.’ He pointed to the house across the road.

  The man frowned. ‘Why would it be in there?’

  Archie thought about this.

  ‘I have no idea,’ he said, eventually. ‘No idea at all.’

  The policeman asked Archie to wait while they sorted everything out, and sorting everything out seemed to take quite a long time. An hour later, Archie was still waiting, sitting on a wall, when Cyd, the girl from the car, came over to join him.

  ‘I wanted to thank you,’ she said, ‘for calling the police and getting them to dig us out. I might still be stuck in there if you hadn’t.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Archie.

  Cyd sat down on the wall beside him.

  ‘They’ve worked out what happened with the piano,’ she said. ‘It was really weird. The man was supposed to deliver it to number sixteen, so he stopped at the house at the top of the hill because it had number sixteen on the gate. Only it wasn’t really number sixteen. It was number ninety-one, but the house number had swung upside down. Then, while they were trying to sort it out, the piano rolled down the hill, and it stopped outside the real number sixteen and they took it inside. Can you believe it? I can’t. I mean … all those things happening. If I hadn’t seen it, I’d never have believed it.’

  ‘No,’ said Archie. ‘People usually don’t.’

  Cyd looked at him. ‘You mean … things like this have happened to you before?’

  ‘They happen to me every day,’ said Archie.

  ‘Every day?’

  ‘Pretty much.’ Archie nodded.

  ‘Wow!’ The girl smiled. ‘That must make life interesting. Look, Mum wants to buy you an ice cream or something, you know, to say thank you for saving my life. Would that be all right?’

  And Archie said yes, he thought it would be very all right. And after that, the morning turned out to be a lot more cheerful than he had expected. Though his mother was not particularly cheerful when he got home. What was the point, she said, of going out to post a letter, when you came back two hours later with it still in your pocket?

  ‘Honestly!’ she muttered as she left the letter on the table in the hall. ‘I don’t believe it, Archie!’

  On Tuesday, when Archie was walking down to the shops to get some milk, he found a little dog lying on the pavement.

  The dog wasn’t moving, and Archie’s first thought was that it might be dead. But he remembered his father once saying that the way to tell if an animal was still alive was to put your fingers on its neck and feel for a pulse. So he dropped the coat he had been carrying, knelt down and put his fingers on the dog’s neck. He wasn’t quite sure how many fingers to use or where to put them, so he used all of them, trying to see if there was any sign of life.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said a voice behind him.

  Archie looked round and saw a large woman with a gardening fork standing on the other side of the low wall that ran along the pavement.

  ‘You’re strangling my sister’s dog!’ The woman had a look of astonishment on her face. ‘I don’t believe it! You’re strangling Timmy!’

  ‘No!’ said Archie. ‘I’m not, I …’ He snatched his hands away from the dog’s neck and stepped quickly back from the little body on the pavement. Unfortunately, the Velcro strip on one of his trainers had got caught in the dog’s collar and, as he moved his foot away, the dog moved with it. In fact, it sailed through the air before breaking free from the strap on Archie’s shoe and landing with a thud against the trunk of a tree.

  ‘You kicked him!’ said the large woman, her look of astonishment changing to one of horror. ‘First you strangle him and then you kick him into a tree. I don’t believe it!’

  ‘No, no!’ said Archie. ‘That just … happened.’ He ran over to where the dog was lying on the pavement and picked it up. The little body lay in his hands, very still.

  ‘You’ve killed him, haven’t you!’ said the woman.

  Archie opened his mouth to explain but, before he could speak, a small, rather sharp woman appeared from round the side of the house.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she dem
anded as she hurried towards them. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘This boy,’ said the large woman, ‘has killed Timmy!’ She pointed to Archie. ‘He strangled him with his bare hands, then kicked him into that tree. I saw him do it!’

  The small woman stared at Archie and at the dog he was holding, her mouth open in disbelief.

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Archie. ‘I didn’t kick him anywhere. Well, not on purpose.’ He stepped forward and carefully placed the body of the dog on the wall. ‘It was … an accident.’

  ‘An accident!’ The large woman snorted. ‘How do you kick a dog to death by accident?’ She turned to her sister. ‘He did it on purpose. I saw him do it!’

  The small woman did not answer. Instead, her lip quivering, her eyes filling with tears, she gazed down at the body of her dog, and began to cry.

  ‘He’s gone!’ she sobbed. ‘My little Timmy … gone!’

  ‘Look, I’m really sorry,’ said Archie, ‘but if you’d just let me explain—’

  ‘I think you’ve done quite enough for one day,’ said the large woman, putting an arm round her sister. ‘We’d like you to go now.’

  Archie tried twice to tell the women the truth, but each time it only seemed to make things worse and, in the end, he did as he was told. He picked up his coat from where he’d left it on the pavement and walked sadly away.

  Behind him, he could hear the large woman telling the small one that they would bury the body together, perhaps under the lilac bush that little Timmy had loved so much when he was alive, and then …

  ‘Aaaaaaaagh!’

  Archie turned round.

  ‘What’s happened?’ The small woman had stopped crying for a moment and was staring down at the garden wall. ‘Where is he? Where’s he gone?’

  Both women were staring at the place on the wall where Archie had left the dog. They looked at the wall, then down at the pavement, then at the garden on the other side, but there was no sign of the dog. It had disappeared.