Creeped Out

by Z. Fraillon

  ‘Ooh!’ said Saffy as she realised what Jasper was getting at.

  Suddenly Jasper didn’t care about letting the Grubbergrind loose. It seemed silly to even catch a stupid monster, when they could all escape Monstrum House, right now.

  ‘What?’ said Felix.

  ‘We could always just – well – you know, keep going,’ said Jasper. The thought of freedom raced through his head. He couldn’t stop grinning.

  Felix shone the torch in Jasper’s face. ‘Are you serious?’

  Jasper shielded his eyes from the torch beam. ‘We have twenty-four hours. They won’t notice we’re missing for the whole time we are meant to be on the Task, and by then we’ll be long gone.’

  Saffy was nodding. ‘It’s brilliant!’

  ‘No more monsters!’ Felix realised.

  ‘No more teachers!’ Saffy added.

  ‘No more punishments!’ Saffy and Felix said at the same time.

  ‘Although … ’ Felix trailed off. Jasper wondered if he was thinking about their rather painful escape attempt earlier in the year, when Felix and Saffy had been morphed into stone statues by a Bogglemorph.

  ‘Come on, Felix,’ Saffy said, ‘it’s not like you’re safe from monsters if you stay at school. And besides, if we run into anything, Jasper can take it on this time. And then, once we’re out of here, hunting monsters won’t be your problem anymore!’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Jasper said.

  Felix sighed and shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said.

  Jasper thought it wouldn’t take long to get past the school boundary going along the pipes. Then they could climb up a manhole, and into freedom. Relief flooded his body.

  Jasper wasn’t exactly sure what was outside the Monstrum House school grounds. They could be anywhere, really. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care about any of it anymore.

  They kept walking along the drain. Shadows flashed in and out of the torch beams. Their footsteps echoed along the pipes as they splashed through the drain.

  ‘Freedom – here we come!’ Saffy called, her voice bouncing off the walls.

  Suddenly, Jasper heard it again. That same hissing whisper. Kuuumm … Jassssppeeer … it whispered. Naaah … kuuum …. Jasper felt his guts clench into a tight ball.

  ‘Did either of you hear that?’ he asked.

  ‘Hear what?’ said Felix.

  ‘All I can hear is victory calling,’ Saffy replied happily, splashing her way past Jasper.

  Jasper tried to shake the feeling of dread away, but it stuck. Something was talking to him, and he didn’t know what.

  14

  Jasper, Felix and Saffy continued along the tunnel. It seemed to be growing darker. Maybe their torches were running out of batteries?

  ‘Shhh,’ said Felix. ‘I can hear something.’

  ‘The whispering, yeah?’ asked Jasper.

  ‘No, it’s more like a squelching.’

  They all stopped to listen, but the sound was gone. Felix shrugged and checked the blueprint again. ‘This way,’ he said, bravely taking the lead. He turned around the corner into another pipe. Saffy and Jasper followed close behind.

  As they rounded the corner, Saffy and Jasper smacked straight into Felix, who had stopped dead in his tracks.

  ‘Um, change of plans,’ whispered Felix.

  There, squelched in front of them, was the Grubbergrind. It thrashed its tentacles in the air as it moved towards them. It looked bigger than when Jasper had seen it dropped into the toilet. In fact, Jasper wasn’t sure how it had even fitted down there.

  ‘Perhaps the rats aren’t so bad after all,’ Felix whispered.

  Saffy slowly pulled the net from her backpack. ‘Easy now,’ she cooed. Jasper and Felix stayed frozen to the spot. The Grubbergrind looked like some sort of mutant octopus. A mutant octopus that ate people. Maybe that’s why it had grown. Had it eaten another Task team?

  Saffy crept in closer to the monster, keeping just out of reach of its giant nipper-ended tentacles. She raised the net over its head. The Grubbergrind seemed to smile. Jasper didn’t know monsters could smile.

  As Saffy’s net came down over the monster’s head, it opened its mouth wide and shot a long line of goo towards her. The goo went straight through the netting and hit Saffy squarely in the face.

  There was a tense moment as everyone waited to see what would happen. ‘Gross,’ said Saffy, wiping the goo out of her eyes.

  ‘Does it taste like fish?’ Jasper asked.

  But Saffy didn’t reply. Instead, she began to shrink. Bit by bit.

  Her arms shrank first, and Saffy yelled in surprise as her arms shrank to the size of two pins. Then the determined look on her face grew smaller as her head shrank away. There was a POP, and her body shrank to the size of an orange pip. Saffy was nothing more than a pair of legs with a miniature body and head attached. And then, with a swoosh, her legs seemed to wind in on themselves, and Saffy was no more than the size of a fly.

  And drowning in the stinky water.

  ‘Saffy!’ screamed Felix and Jasper together.

  Jasper didn’t stop to think. He stretched his arm towards the flailing Saffy. He picked her up on his finger, like you would a caterpillar. He was relieved to see she looked OK. Trying to resuscitate someone that small would have been tricky.

  ‘Aaaaargh!’ Felix yelled in some kind of war cry. Jasper looked up just in time to see Felix fly at the monster and deliver a fierce karate kick at its head.

  ‘Go Felix!’ he yelled, forgetting about Saffy for a moment and almost dropping her. A tiny sharp bite to his finger brought him back to his senses.

  Jasper had felt the force of Felix’s karate kicks before, and didn’t think the blubbery octopus had a chance.

  That was, until Felix’s leg bounced off the monster and he was instantly covered in swirling goo. Felix gave Jasper a look of despair, before following Saffy’s performance of shrinking bit by bit into the water.

  Jasper knew that if he got shot by goo, they would all drown. He grabbed Felix’s tiny body from the water and put both Felix and Saffy into his hoodie pocket. Then he reached carefully into his pack.

  ‘Chicken, my beauty?’ he growled, doing his best impersonation of Mr Golag. Jasper remembered the tender look that had crossed Mr Golag’s face when he looked at the monster, and tried to imagine himself feeling the same sort of affection for something so horrible. The Grubbergrind closed its mouth and cocked its head to one side.

  Jasper pulled out an entire roast chicken from his bag and threw it towards the monster. The Grubbergrind grabbed the chicken in its tentacles and quickly sucked the bones dry.

  Jasper hurriedly threw more and more chicken to the monster. But it wasn’t slowing down, and Jasper was going to run out of chicken at this rate. He grabbed the sack and opened it wide.

  ‘There’s more chicken inside, my beauty,’ he growled. The Grubbergrind looked at Jasper again. It opened its mouth. Jasper wondered what would happen to his friends if he was shrunk. Would they shrink again? Would they even exist? How small could something get before it just ‘poofed’ away?

  Jasper waited for the goo to come – but it didn’t. The Grubbergrind squelched its way towards the sack, jumping along on its nippered tentacles. It tried to push inside the sack, but it was far too big.

  The monster started oozing goo out of the suckers on its tentacles. Jasper held his breath. Then the monster began to rub the goo over its own body, and it started shrinking until it was the size of a large cat. It leapt inside the sack, looking for more chicken.

  It must really like chicken, thought Jasper, tying the string securely. He hoped that the goo couldn’t get through the sack. All he could hear was more chewing. The monster seemed happy – for now.

  But what about Felix and Saffy? thought Jasper. Will the teachers be able to unshrink them? What sort of life will they have as mini people? Are there any mini monster-hunting schools?

  Jasper thought of their escape plan. The pipes looked so – well, inv
iting wasn’t the word – but still, freedom lay at the end of one of them

  He grabbed his friends out of his pocket. ‘Which pipe is the way out, Felix?’ All he heard was an angry high-pitched squeak as Felix waved what looked like a very tiny set of blueprints at him.

  ‘What is it with you two getting Monstered every time we try to escape?’ sighed Jasper.

  It was no use. There was only one chance of getting his friends back to their normal size. And it was at Monstrum House. The teachers would know what to do.

  Jasper put his friends carefully back into his pocket, and heaved the wriggling monster-sack onto his back.

  He hurried back along the maze of pipes the way they’d come. He took a few wrong turns, and at one point wondered if he would ever find his way out.

  But after what felt like hours of racing through stinking water by torchlight, Jasper finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He checked his watch. It was late in the afternoon. Soon it would be getting dark.

  He had to get back to school, and get his friends back to size.

  15

  Jasper crept out of the stormwater pipe and into the ditch. While they were in the drain, clouds had come over and now thunder rumbled through the sky. The afternoon had darkened and sleety, icy rain came tumbling down.

  He hated to think what might have happened if they’d still been in the stormwater drain.

  He ran along the ditch towards the fence. The heavy monster-sack bumped against his back.

  ‘Perhaps it’s a good thing we didn’t try to escape,’ Jasper said to his tiny friends. He heard Saffy squeaking something back at him. ‘If you were still normal-sized, we would probably be in the sewers right now. That monster might have just saved our lives.’

  More squeaks made Jasper think his mini friends weren’t feeling very grateful.

  The Grubbergrind wobbled about in the sack on Jasper’s back, but didn’t seem to be too distressed. Perhaps he thinks I really am Mr Golag, thought Jasper.

  The rain was pelting down now, turning the ditch into a mudslide. Jasper tried to clamber his way out through the fence, but with the sack in his hands it was useless.

  The third time Jasper fell down in the mud, he heard his friends squeak angrily from his pocket. ‘Sorry!’ Jasper shouted, probably a bit too loudly for their tiny ears.

  He needed to find another place where he could climb over the fence and back into the forest.

  He followed the fence line until he came to a place where the wire was completely mangled. It looked as though it had been bashed by something huge. Or gnashed. Or sliced. Or …

  Jasper stopped thinking about it. Climbing through here would be easier than fiddling around with the bolt cutters in the dark and wet somewhere else along the fence.

  The ground was overrun with tree roots. Jasper used one as a foothold and scrambled up, pulling himself under the fence and into the forest undergrowth.

  ‘At least I don’t have to worry about monsters,’ Jasper said to the sack. ‘I already have you.’

  Jasper heaved the wriggling sack back onto his back, feeling pleased with himself at having successfully completed the Task. Successful, that is, if you didn’t count the size of his tiny team-mates.

  He made his way into the darkening forest towards the school.

  And then he saw it.

  Standing in front of Jasper, was the biggest, most horrible spider he had ever seen. And it had eight long spindly legs.

  Technically, this wasn’t just the most horrible spider Jasper had ever seen – it was worse than that. It was a spider-monster. Jasper started to shake.

  OK, deep breath, Jasper commanded himself.

  ‘Um, guys, we have a slight problem,’ Jasper said to the tiny friends in his pocket. ‘There’s a spider. Well, it isn’t really a spider, it’s …’ but Jasper didn’t know what it was.

  It had a hairy body and a whole bunch of eyes like other spiders – but it also had wings on its back, rows and rows of sharp fangs, and legs that ended in talons, like you’d see on a vulture. And it was the size of an army tank.

  ‘It’s my worst nightmare,’ Jasper whispered.

  He could make out the entrance to a large lair behind the monster. The lair was covered in a white, sticky spider web, and behind it were the terrified faces of Class 1B.

  ‘JASPER! GET US OUT OF HERE!’ they yelled as soon as they saw him.

  The spider-monster raised its fangs, revealing a blistered yellow tongue oozing with blue pus.

  ‘WHAT IS IT? AND WHAT IS IT DOING HERE?’ Jasper yelled.

  ‘IT’S THE GRUBBERGRIND!’ a voice yelled.

  ‘CATCH IT!’ yelled someone else.

  Home-made slingshots littered the ground around the lair. Suddenly the rubber bands and rulers in the storeroom made sense.

  ‘Hang on,’ Jasper said. ‘But I have the Grubbergrind.’

  He looked down at the sack in his hands. Then back up at the spider-monster. Its gleaming eyes were fixed on him. Jasper could see his face reflected in every eye – and he couldn’t help but notice the look of utter confusion in every reflection. It took Jasper a few moments to work things out.

  ‘But if … if that is the Grubbergrind …’ Jasper trailed off, then I haven’t caught the Grubbergrind after all, he realised. I just have some random toilet monster in my sack, two mini friends in my pocket, a whole bunch of classmates trapped in a lair, and a monster waiting to catch me.

  And it’s a Muncher, he reminded himself, looking at its gleaming fangs.

  Suddenly, Jasper felt very cold. The Grubbergrind had moved without a sound. It was right above of him. It lifted its front legs, twirling a ball of web down towards him.

  Jasper took a deep breath. Despair filled his body. He didn’t even scream. He was done for.

  16

  Jasper watched in horror as the Grubbergrind – the real one this time – reared its front legs above its head. In some part of his brain, a soothing voice told him that he wouldn’t actually be killed, just trapped like the rest of the class.

  But the rest of his brain broke out into a cold panic. DONE FOR. DONE FOR. BIG SPIDER.

  GONER.

  And my life isn’t even flashing before my eyes, Jasper thought. He felt kind of ripped off. If he was going to die, he might as well do it properly.

  A sharp bark broke through Jasper’s thoughts. The Grubbergrind froze, a few centimetres from Jasper’s shaking body. There was another bark, followed by a deep, guttural growl. Jasper didn’t move a muscle.

  The Grubbergrind stepped backwards, whirring its wings angrily as it backed away from the approaching dog.

  Woof had his teeth bared at the monster. He really looked like a ferocious guard dog. Woof pounced, and sank his teeth into the monster’s abdomen. But even a dog as big as Woof was no match for a tank-sized, fanged, winged, taloned spider-monster.

  It is still a monster with monstrous instincts, Stenka had said. Jasper figured it would be pretty happy to eat a dog.

  Woof didn’t stand a chance.

  Feeling panicked, Jasper thought about everything he had in his pack. Paperclips? Useless. Bolt cutters? No good. Chicken? Chocolate bars? No … I think Munchers prefer live bait.

  So much for being prepared.

  And then something in Jasper’s brain clicked. He did have a weapon! He opened the sack.

  ‘Do this,’ Jasper whispered to the toilet monster, ‘and there’s a whole load more chicken for you.’ He really hoped the monster understood.

  Jasper reached inside and pulled the monster out by its slimy, wart-covered head. The monster didn’t look too pleased, but it didn’t shoot goo at him.

  ’Get back, Woof!’ Jasper yelled. ‘NOW!’ he shouted, giving the toilet monster a squeeze. The monster obeyed, opening its mouth wide and spraying goo all over the Grubbergrind.

  The Grubbergrind froze. There was complete silence. And then, before everyone’s eyes, it began to shrink, leg by leg, eye by eye, talon by horrible t
alon, right down to the size of a small spider. Well, a small spider with wings, fangs and talons.

  Before it had a chance to escape, Jasper grabbed a box of matches from their supplies, emptied it out and clapped it over the shrunken monster. Then, he carefully slid the matchbox lid back over the box.

  The Grubbergrind was trapped.

  ‘Not a spider, not a spider, not a spider,’ Jasper whispered to himself, and shoved it deep into the pocket of his hoodie.

  Then he remembered Saffy and Felix! He ripped the matchbox out again, and put it in his other pocket, then zipped it firmly shut. His friends would definitely be angry now.

  Jasper smiled at the toilet monster and patted its slimy head. ‘Thanks, fella. You’re not so bad after all.’

  Jasper thought the toilet monster looked almost cute. It blobbed at him cheerfully and wound a tentacle lovingly around his hand.

  ‘Hmm, OK, let’s just put you back …’ Jasper untangled his arm and gently placed the toilet monster back into the sack.

  Woof limped over to Jasper, licking his hand. The Grubbergrind had cut a gash in his leg with a talon but, other than that, he seemed fine.

  Jasper knelt down and hugged the dog. ‘You’re a good boy,’ he said.

  Jasper was pulled back to reality by a voice shouting at him from inside the monster’s lair.

  ‘Come on, Jasper!’ called one of his classmates. ‘We’re still stuck here, you know!’

  A sudden crack of thunder made the trapped kids yell even more frantically.

  Jasper pulled the bolt cutters from his pack, and cut through the thick strands of sticky white webbing. When he was done, the captured kids burst out of the lair, hugged him, and sprinted back towards the mansion as if it was not such a bad place to be after all.

  Jasper made a mental note to ask them later how they had worked out the clue. He had the feeling that this was one mistake Saffy and Felix wouldn’t let him forget in a hurry.

  17

  Jasper stood to attention in front of Stenka’s desk. It was hard to tell exactly how angry she was because she wasn’t yelling – she was staring icily at him. She picked up the stick she usually used for pointing, and snapped it in half.