Oliver Fibbs and the Giant Boy-Munching Bugs

by Steve Hartley

  In the morning, Bobby Bragg was waiting for me in the playground, lining up to go into school with the rest of my classmates.

  ‘Lies! Lies! Your ears are full of flies!’ he laughed.

  I know I should have kept my mouth shut, but Bobby’s horrible mocking face made my blood boil . . .

  ‘My will pop out any time now,’ I said. ‘I can feel them pushing up to the surface. And, when they do, my SHOW AND TELL on Monday is going to be the best ever. It’ll be tons better than anything you’ve ever done.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ sneered Bobby. ‘I’m going for a trial with the Boriston Tigers football team tomorrow. I was top scorer in the schools league last season. I’ll be showing my new kit on Monday.’

  The other kids looked impressed.

  ‘I’ll be giving an update on my frog-breeding experiment,’ said Toby. ‘I’m creating new types of frogs in the colours of all the top football teams.’

  Hattie Hurley began to dance. ‘I’m off to the National Conference Centre on Sunday with the National Super-spellers Cheerleading Team, to take part in the International Spelling Bee Cheerleading Championship,’ she announced. ‘We’re going to be T, R, I, U, M, P, H, A, N, T,’ she spelled, kicking her feet in the air and swirling imaginary pom-poms over her head as she shouted out each letter.

  Everyone clapped. My heart sank.

  ‘Come on, gang,’ said Bobby, setting off towards the main school door with Toby and Hattie.

  ‘The other Super And Special Kids are going to do great SHOW AND TELLs too,’ warned Leon Curley. ‘Jamie Ryder’s cycling for the County BMX team on Sunday.’

  ‘And Melody Nightingale’s going to sing at Princess Chelsea’s wedding,’ added Millie Dangerfield.

  ‘All I’ve done is made a scale-model of a donkey out of Snik-Snak chocbar wrappers,’ said Peaches sadly. ‘But its head keeps falling off.’

  ‘Well, Bobby Bragg’s big head’ll fall off on Monday when he sees my ,’ I declared.

  I had to find that bug and get bitten – quick!

  Algy and I spent hours hunting the DEVIL BUG that evening.

  ‘Maybe Dad didn’t bring one home after all,’ said Algy, rummaging through the pile of in the wash-basket.

  ‘He must have!’ I cried frantically. ‘If I don’t have by Monday morning, I am than the dodo in the dodo cemetery.’

  I was so desperate, I even crept into Dad’s darkened room to search for the BUG. Dad was a shapeless lump huddled under the sheets, with his spiky hair sticking out at one end. His body moved slightly as he breathed harsh, raspy breaths. He looked exactly like . . .

  I gasped.

  WHAT IF . . . the doctors had got it wrong? WHAT IF . . . Dad had a disease that was turning him into one of the huge, fat maggots in Terror of Grub Island?

  Even with my pen-torch to help me, there was no way I was going to find a small DEVIL BUG in the dark. In the end I gave up, and slunk off to bed. I didn’t even read a comic before I went to sleep.

  I woke up early the next morning, and heard my brother moving around in his room. Creeping down the hallway so I wouldn’t wake anyone else, I went to see what he was up to. Algy was fizzing with excitement.

  ‘I found the bug last night, after you’d gone to sleep!’ he hissed. ‘It was crawling across the carpet in Mum and Dad’s bedroom.’

  I punched the air with both fists, and mouthed a silent ‘Yesssssssssssssssssssssss!’

  ‘And guess what! It bit me!’ He showed me a tiny red on the end of his thumb. ‘It didn’t hurt. It was just like a pin-prick.’

  I hugged him and did a little jiggy dance in the middle of the room. ‘Algy, you’ve saved my life! Where is it?’

  A naughty grin spread across Algy’s face. ‘I let it loose in the twins’ room before they went to bed.’

  ‘You let it go? But it’s got to bite ME!’ I said. ‘We’ve got to find it again – now!’

  Taking the empty matchbox that Algy had kept the bug in, we carefully opened the the girls’ bedroom door, and tiptoed inside. Emma and Gemma lay submerged under their bedcovers, still fast asleep. I signalled to Algy to search around the wardrobes and dressing tables, while I hunted under their beds.

  I’d just realized that I had forgotten to ask him what a UBANGI DEVIL BUG actually looked like, when he went, ‘Pst!’

  I , as the sheet on the bed above me rustled. Emma stirred and stretched. Her arm flopped over the edge of the bed, smacking me on the head. Luckily, she didn’t wake up.

  Across the room, Algy lifted his left foot to show me a small, red insect dangling from his big toe. I crawled over to him on all fours, flicked the creature into the matchbox, then pushed the lid closed.

  Back in my room, we slowly opened the box, and peered at the DEVIL BUG. It didn’t look very devilish, just an ordinary beetle, about a centimetre long.

  ‘Right then, here goes,’ I said, poking the creature with my finger.

  I felt a slight sting as the BUG bit me, but Algy was right – it didn’t hurt much.

  I was happier than at the end of when he captures the icecream poisoner, Giuseppe Gelato, then falls into a gigantic vat of strawberry milkshake. I was going to get and do the best SHOW AND TELL in the history of SHOW AND TELLs. All I had to do now was wait for my to appear.

  ‘Do you think the DEVIL BUG’s bitten everyone?’ said Algy, carefully closing the matchbox to keep the insect inside.

  ‘Probably,’ I replied. ‘You found it in Mum and Dad’s bedroom, and you put it in with the twins last night, so they must have been munched. That only leaves Constanza.’

  At breakfast, I searched my sisters’ faces for signs of bursting out.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ snapped Emma.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Then stop it,’ ordered Gemma.

  At last, Dad finally appeared, shuffling into the kitchen, yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He looked different from the last time I’d seen him, two nights before – not half as scary as I remembered.

  ‘What’s happened to your ?’ I asked.

  ‘ ? It’s just a rash,’ replied Dad.

  ‘But when you burst out of the bathroom, you had red eyes!’

  ‘They were just a bit bloodshot.’

  ‘And your hair was like a zillion volts had gone through it!’

  Dad laughed. ‘It was just messed up because I’d been asleep.’

  ‘But I heard you scream!’

  ‘I stubbed my toe on the toilet.’

  ‘But I heard you scream twice!’

  ‘Then I banged my funny-bone on the basin.’

  Mum smiled. ‘I think you got carried away by your imagination, Oliver.’

  ‘As usual,’ chimed the twins.

  ‘The symptoms of are quite mild,’ she explained. ‘A ticklish COUGH, sore EYES, bit of a RASH, a few SNIFFLES and having to take lots of NAPS. The only known cure is lashings of cabbage-and-cauliflower soup.’

  Typical! I get the chance to catch a disease, and it’s a Dull And Boring one. Even so, it was still a disease. I would just have to make the symptoms a lot worse for my SHOW AND TELL.

  That Saturday in the house was extra-quiet.

  Dad was asleep most of the day.

  Mum was in her office, writing up her weekly brain-operation report.

  Emma and Gemma were in their bedroom, painting their toenails.

  Constanza had the morning off to meet a friend.

  Algy stayed in his room playing his computer at chess.

  I decided to spend the afternoon at my SECRET HIDEAWAY behind the garden shed at the bottom of the garden. It was a perfect place to hide and read comics in peace. I’d been spending so much time out there that a few weeks earlier Mum and Dad had got suspicious, and wanted to know what I was up to.

  I had to think fast. They didn’t like me reading comics all day, so I told them that I was interested in all the different plants and trees we had growing in the garden. Their eyes shone with delight.

&nb
sp; ‘Maybe you’re going to be a BRILLIANT garden designer!’ cheered Dad.

  ‘You must do a plant project!’ exclaimed Mum.

  They bought me a magnifying glass, a massive book called A Complete Field Guide to the Plants and Trees of the World, by Dr Henrietta Pettigrew, and gave me a scrapbook to collect leaves and flowers in. Every day I’d stick in a leaf, or a blade of grass, or a twig to keep them happy. But what the scrapbook was really great for was hiding my comics.

  I strolled down to the Hideaway, and settled down on the grass to read my new comic for the second time. I’d taken a small mirror with me, and every few minutes I checked my face to see if the had started to sprout.

  By teatime, I was still -free, and my stomach was rumbling like the dormant volcano in MOUNTAIN OF HELLFIRE. I picked a couple of weeds, stuck them in my scrapbook, and went back to the house.

  As I opened the back door, I heard Mum shout, ‘!’

  The whole family was sitting around the kitchen table, holding their noses. A green FOG hung above them like a sickly ghost. I sat down next to Mum, and looked closely at her face. Her rash didn’t look anywhere near as scary on a Saturday teatime as Dad’s did at five to midnight on a Thursday night.

  Constanza stood at the cooker, boiling up a pan of cabbage-and-cauliflower soup for Dad. ‘Mamma mia! This big time!’ She smiled at Mum. ‘Now I make extra for signora. Everyone else have pizza!’

  At bedtime, I was just brushing my teeth when from their room down the hall I heard the twins shout, ‘!’ at exactly the same time.

  There was a moment of silence, then a blood-curdling ‘Noooooooooooooo!’

  As I poked my head out of the door to listen, I saw Algy’s face grinning at me as he took a sly peek too.

  ‘Me next,’ he whispered.

  ‘Then me,’ I replied.

  I checked in the bathroom mirror before I went down for breakfast the next morning, but my face was as Dull And Boring as usual.

  Any time now, I thought, and a tingle of excitement rippled through my tummy.

  Halfway down the stairs, the of Constanza’s cabbage-and-cauliflower soup smacked into my face. Mum, Dad, Emma and Gemma sat round the kitchen table, looking like an extra-specially meeting of the Society for Seriously People.

  Algy turned round and smiled at me: his were huge!

  My family’s went from Algy’s big, brand-new bumps to Dad’s ‘bit of a rash’, which just looked like a healthy suntan now. Everybody had bloodshot eyes, except for Dad, whose eyes were completely back to normal.

  Constanza stood at the cooker, -free, like me. She was warming up the remains of yesterday’s DISGUSTING dinner. The nose-curling of the vile brew hung in the room like a trump.

  ‘Green Soup for breakfast!?’ I said. ‘Can I have toast instead?’

  ‘How do you feel, Oliver?’ asked Mum, scooping up a spoonful of soup. ‘Any coughs, sniffles or ?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I replied.

  ‘Perhaps you and Constanza haven’t been bitten,’ said Dad.

  ‘I have. The DEVIL BUG bit me yesterday, just after it got Algy.’

  ‘You were supposed to report to me if you saw it,’ said Mum crossly. ‘I hope you squashed it.’

  I glanced at Algy, who just stared into his soup, and said nothing. ‘Er . . . no. It . . . escaped.’

  ‘We need to get rid of the thing before it bites anyone else,’ said Dad.

  ‘If you’ve not got symptoms by now, Oliver,’ said Mum with a sniff, ‘I don’t think you’re going to get them.’

  ‘But I have to catch it,’ I cried. ‘WHAT IF . . . I’ve got Really Bad , and it’s taking longer to brew up in me, but . . . but . . . when it bursts out, my are , my cough coughier, and my sniffles snottier? WHAT IF it turns me into a horrible plague beast, just like in ?’ ‘I don’t think so, Oliver,’ said Mum. ‘Maybe you and Constanza are immune to .’

  Noooooooooooooo!

  With no to SHOW AND TELL about, Monday morning was going to be the worst ever.

  ‘But perhaps you’d better stay home from school on Monday,’ added Mum. ‘Just in case.’

  Phew! That was an even closer shave than in Close Shave, when my hero was about to have all his internal organs replaced by metal ones, turning him into a Humbot (a human/robot hybrid). Luckily, the batteries in the electronic heart of the dastardly Dr Sturgeon the surgeon died, and so did he.

  Monday morning arrived but my didn’t. I phoned Peaches to have a moan about it.

  ‘It’s not fair, Pea. I can’t even catch a Dull And Boring disease. Bobby Bragg’ll laugh me out of school when he finds out.’

  ‘You’re being kept off school,’ said Peaches. ‘That’s proof you’re not telling FIBS. And you could photograph your brother to show everyone what it was like.’

  I sighed. ‘Yeah, I suppose. But it’s not as good as having the myself, is it?’

  ‘At least you’ll have more time to practise for the KIDS CAN DO TALENT SHOW. Miss Wilkins wants to see our acts this week.’

  My heart sank to my socks. In all the excitement, I’d completely forgotten!

  Symon Cowbell, the local radio DJ and talent-scout, was visiting all the local schools, and choosing his favourite act from each one to perform in a special Holiday Festival show at the Town Hall.

  Nightmare! How totally HORRIBLE would that be? Of course, I didn’t have to worry, because there was no way I’d be chosen. My only talents are reading comics, eating pizza and making stuff up!

  The TROUBLE was everyone had to stand on the school stage and perform for him, even the Dull And Boring kids.

  It was going to be worse than SHOW AND TELL.

  It was going to be worse than .

  It was going to be .

  I hadn’t a clue what to do.

  I’d thought about showing him my lightning-fast pencil-sharpening skills (six pencils in a minute).

  Or wiggling my right eyebrow in time to the national anthem (I usually get eyebrow-cramp halfway through the second verse).

  Or balancing nine chocolate buttons on my nose. (Peaches was seriously impressed when I showed her that trick.)

  I’d even dug out a book called BALLOON-MODELLING FOR BEGINNERS, by Mungo the Magnificent, that Mum and Dad had bought me ages ago when they’d thought I might be a BRILLIANT magician. (Of course, all my tricks went wrong.)

  ‘What are you doing for the show, Pea?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a SECRET,’ she replied. ‘I’ve been taking lessons and practising for weeks. I’ll show you when I’ve got it perfect.’

  Now I was really nervous! The only thing that could take my mind off my total lack of talent was a long session of comic-reading. I headed for my SECRET HIDEAWAY at the bottom of the garden. Straight away something caught my eye, sticking out of the ground and glowing in the dark tangle of vegetation. Strange that I’d never noticed it before . . .

  WHAT IF . . . it was treasure, an ancient pot containing the germs horrible disease, brought back from the African by an explorer, and lost for over a hundred years?

  But it was just an old yellow coffee mug, with a huge lump of inside, and a beetle scurrying around at the bottom.

  I settled down with . This would never happen to him. His life was never Dull And Boring.

  When Constanza called me in at lunchtime, she was bustling around the kitchen, singing an Italian song. My family had all gone back to bed for a snooze, and the remains of the Green Soup they’d eaten lay in bowls on the kitchen table.

  ‘You and me no have sick, Oliver,’ said Constanza. ‘So we no eat that. Orribile!’

  Instead, we had her special spaghetti Bolognese, with strawberry-ripple ice cream for dessert.

  In the afternoon, Constanza had her siesta, so I went to my room and read for the third time. Just as I finished, I got a desperate phone call from Peaches.

  ‘Bobby Bragg’s coming round to your house!’ she said. ‘He wants to laugh at your . Some of the other kids are coming too. They’ll be there in about half
an hour. I tried to stop them, but you know Bobby . . .’

  Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

  ‘Will you come too?’ I begged her. ‘I’m going to need someone on my side.’

  What was I going to do? Think, think, think!

  First, I needed an exclusion zone to keep Bobby at a distance, just like the perimeter fence that had to get through in SECRET SPY LAB (except mine wouldn’t be electrified, covered in poisonous spikes, armed with laser-blasters, scanned by cameras and surrounded by quicksand).

  I charged down the cellar steps, and began rummaging around among the junk. I found some blue nylon rope, a piece of plywood, a rusty klaxon-horn, an old stiff paint brush and a pot of red paint.

  I’d started to daub a warning sign on the wooden board when Algy appeared at the cellar door in his pyjamas. ‘What are you doing, Ollie?’ he asked, scratching his tummy and yawning.

  ‘Setting up an exclusion zone around the house.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t ask questions! Just help!’ I ordered. ‘Is anyone else awake yet?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ replied Algy, wiping his sniffly nose on his pyjama sleeve.

  ‘Good – sneak into the twins’ bedroom and get their make-up box.’

  I finished painting the sign, dashed out up the front path, tied the old horn to the gatepost, and hung the sign in the middle of the gate:

  It was ! The red paint down creepily from the skull and crossbones.

  I was running out of time, so rushed back into the house to see if Algy had completed his mission. I tiptoed past Mum and Dad’s bedroom to the sound of their soft snoozy snores, just as my brother crept into the hallway, carrying the twins’ make-up box.

  ‘What’s going on, Ollie?’ he asked, dumping his swag on my bed, and giving his runny nose another wipe.

  I quickly explained my problem to him. ‘You’ve got exactly five minutes to make me look like the worst case of ever,’ I told him.