Chop-Chop, Mad Cap!

by Juliette Saumande

  Sapphire took a step towards Mad Cap and her growl deepened.

  Madgie wished Mrs Mudrick’s neighbour hadn’t had to go to hospital and that Mrs Mudrick didn’t have to go and annoy her and that … oh, anything rather than be here with this beast.

  She could see Sapphire’s teeth very clearly now and for a second she knew exactly what was going to happen next. It involved a jumping fury and lots and lots of bite marks.

  She stayed where she was, with her back to the door and her feet leaving dirty prints on the ugly lino. Her hands, her chest, her whole body felt as if it had been taken over by an army of angry ants that marched under her skin, making it impossible to move and painful to breathe.

  She had to do something. She had to think. And fast. But her mind was reaching panic mode as the spitting cat kept coming. She thought about Norbert. If only she were a genius, too!

  She groped frantically in her brain for anything that could be useful. Come on! She had faced danger before. Raiding her brother’s bedroom at midnight was no joke! She vaguely remembered how she had panicked when Colm had grabbed her arm in his sleep. But she’d had Norbert and his brilliant plans to guide her at the time. To save her. ‘One: do this. Two: do that. Three …’

  But now she was on her own, with no one to say ‘One, two, three’ for her.

  Sapphire was halfway up the corridor, growling louder than a boy-racer car zooming down the road. Madgie’s heart was beating fast and loud, like a pair of crazy castanets.

  One, two, three, she thought. One, two, three.

  And suddenly it was as if Norbert were there, talking to her, telling her what to do. Or rather, how to do. She had to make her own plan. She had to stare her problem in the face and chop it up like Mr Fitzmarcel used to carve up meat.

  ‘One: open the kitchen door,’ she murmured, feeling her heart slowing down. ‘Two: throw in the food.’

  She realised she could shake her legs and her arms. The angry ants weren’t so angry anymore.

  ‘Three: make a run for it.’

  She was back to herself now. She could breathe. She could move. And she could see that, as plans went, it wasn’t terribly refined, but it would have to do.

  Sapphire stayed put, her eyes like headlights on the paper bag. Madgie had reached the first door. The smell in the hall reminded her of the spray Mum used to ‘decontaminate’ the loo, and also of Grandma’s perfume. She opened the door, hoping that it was the kitchen and that the stench wouldn’t be so bad in there.

  It was a living-room. At least, it was a room with a big armchair and a telly. The rest was completely taken over by knitting stuff: there were needles in the vases, balls of wool in the fruit bowl, piles of pink and blue baby cardies and, spread on the coffee table, a massive square thing, maybe a blanket, all red and black.

  So much for part one of her plan.

  Madgie went up to the table. OK, she wasn’t supposed to be in this room at all, but Mrs Mudrick’s note hadn’t said anything about looking, had it? As long as she didn’t touch anything, she was grand.

  All around the edges of the blanket – which she could see now wasn’t finished – were big black knives with a red tip, all so neatly knitted that you might have thought they were real. In each corner was a black skull with red eyes and in the middle of the piece were just two words. Two words that were enough to make Madgie run out of the room, skid on the lino as far as the second door in the corridor, trip over a furious Sapphire and tumble into the kitchen.

  She unwrapped the butcher’s parcel and dumped it in the cat’s plate without even realising it wasn’t meat at all but a white, 100% veggie tofu steak. She bumped into Sapphire again, threw the bag in an overflowing bin and rushed to the front door.

  It was only later, at home, after tea and a bath and some ‘friendly wrestling’, that she allowed herself to think about what she had seen on Mrs Mudrick’s coffee table. She took out her superhero’s secret mission log and copied it down:

  5

  THE TEMPLE OF CODES

  On Saturday morning, Mad Cap came to a decision. She had to talk to Norbert, no matter what. There was a missing man, a potential butcher-killer on the loose and a history essay she needed to finish for Monday.

  She wrote out in her log book everything she had discovered so far. She made it as neat as possible, with drawings and stuff, so that her friend would be impressed – which he would have been if she hadn’t left the notebook on the kitchen table as she grabbed an oatmeal muffin before setting out for the Soups’ house.

  She was already crossing the road when she realised this. She would have had time to go back and get it, but she was simply too dumbstruck by what she had just seen.

  And that was a rabbit.

  Now, rabbits are common animals. But not this rabbit. It was ginormous, it was furry, it was bright yellow and it was Norbert.

  Madgie forced herself to move. She approached cautiously, bending double, keeping the little dishevelled hedge between herself and the beast. She noticed something else now. People were queuing outside her friend’s house. They would walk up to a table where Mrs Soup was seated with a neat notepad and perfectly sharpened pencils. Then they would stare at the big yellow fluffy thing, laugh like maniacs and sign Mrs Soup’s book.

  What was going on?

  ‘Are you in yet?’

  The voice made Madgie jump. She turned around. It was the old man who had put up the posters for the panto.

  ‘They’ll be looking for young’uns like yourself.’

  She looked at him blankly.

  ‘It’s gonna be a good show,’ he added. ‘The best bit of tap dancing in a long time, I’m told.’

  He tipped his cap and tapped his way away. Then, at long last, the penny dropped. Tap! Tap! Tap! The Soups were enrolling people for the panto auditions!

  Mad Cap didn’t fancy tap dancing all that much, but she thought pretending to want to enter the audition would be a good excuse to talk to Norbert.

  She took a deep breath and approached the rabbit and his mum.

  ‘Ah, Madgie!’ cried Mrs Soup. ‘How’s your poor dear mother? Do you want to sign up or are you here to see Norbert?’

  ‘She’s here for the audition,’ Norbert cut in before Mad Cap could reply or ask why everybody seemed to be thinking her mother was ‘poor’.

  Norbert was sweating like nobody’s business inside his rabbit costume and didn’t seem to be enjoying the whole fancy-dress thing at all.

  Madgie wrote her name in the notepad.

  ‘The list is full, off you go now, chop-chop!’ announced Mrs Soup to the disappointment of the few people who had joined the queue behind Mad Cap. ‘Jolly good! I can go in now and finish my Scrabble Scramble prototype. Or should I call it Scramble Scrabble? Must make a note of that.’

  She folded her papers, dragged the table inside and within seconds Norbert and Mad Cap were left on their own outside the front door.

  ‘Listen,’ Madgie began, ‘I’m …’

  I’m what? she thought. Was she sorry? Was she still a bit cross? Was she embarrassed? What was it she had come to tell Norbert? She stared at her feet as if she would find an answer in the mud patterns on her runners. She’d never felt so awkward before.

  At last, she opened her mouth. She still had no idea what she was going to say, but anything had to be better than a big fat silence.

  ‘Hang on,’ Norbert began. He had been busy tearing off the rabbit costume and was now in the process of beheading it.

  Mad Cap looked up from her shoes and noticed his socks: the furry ones with little pompoms stuck on the back of the heels. Just like a rabbit’s tail, she now realised.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been a complete eejit. It’s because of this panto business. Costumes give me the creeps. I mean, not your superhero one, of course. But I don’t like wearing extra heads and so on. It makes me cranky. Friends?’

  As always with Norbert, things were clear and easy. Easy as one, two, three! Madgie thought happily.<
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  Norbert offered his hand. Madgie shook it delightedly.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, remembering suddenly why she had come to the Soups’ house in the first place. ‘There’s stuff going on.’

  ‘Stuff? Surely you want to be more specific than that,’ replied Norbert seriously, and for a second she thought he might go into his foul mood again.

  ‘Well,’ she said, racking her brain for a better word, ‘you know … things.’

  ‘Ah, I see, things!’ he said with a wink and a smile. ‘We’re back in business then!’

  Madgie had seen Norbert’s bedroom many times. She had seen it during his astronomy phase, littered with blocks of cheddar carved in the shape of the moon. She had seen it covered in his sisters’ colourful tights when he was trying to invent an eighth colour of the rainbow. She had seen it black with soot when he had wanted to be a chemist.

  So when she stepped into the room that morning after telling Norbert everything over a cup of hot chocolate in the kitchen, she was a bit disappointed. There was a torch on the desk, a pile of bright orange flags in a corner (like the ones they wave at planes in the airport) and a mousetrap sitting in the middle of the carpet. And that was all.

  ‘Welcome,’ Norbert said grandly, ‘to the Temple of Codes!’

  Noticing Mad Cap wasn’t as impressed as he’d hoped, he added sheepishly, ‘Well, I wanted to build a bonfire to work on smoke messages, but Mum said ‘no way’ after the chemistry experiments. I tried with a candle, but it just wasn’t the same.’

  ‘What’s that thing doing here?’ asked Madgie, pointing at the mousetrap. ‘Surely Scrum can do that job. Or is he too fat and lazy?’

  This last bit she whispered, seeing the huge cat emerging from under the bed. Scrum rubbed against her legs, nearly sending her sprawling, and thumped his way out of the room, making Norbert’s paperclip collection rattle in its jam jar.

  Norbert picked up the mousetrap.

  ‘This,’ he announced ‘is … well, will soon be … a Morse transmitter.’

  ‘Morse?’ Mad Cap repeated. ‘I know him. The guy from the telly. Mum’s soft on him, but Dad says it’s all fanciful gobbledegook and real inspectors don’t have time for crosswords.’

  Norbert rolled his eyes.

  ‘Not that Morse, you big eejit! This one,’ he said, producing a sheet full of dots and lines.

  ‘Well,’ replied Madgie, a bit huffily, ‘I don’t think real inspectors have time for join the dots either!’

  Wisely, Norbert said nothing. Instead, he took a metal skewer and crawled under his desk. Mad Cap followed. They were a bit cramped down there, but she didn’t mind. They were pals again.

  ‘Listen,’ called Norbert as he banged the skewer three times, very quickly, on the pipe that ran along the wall.

  He shoved the paper into Madgie’s hands and said: ‘Three short signals. Like dots. That’s an S. See it on the chart?’

  Mad Cap’s eyes brightened.

  ‘Ah, this Morse!’

  Norbert gave three more beats with his skewer, but this time they were further apart.

  ‘We’ll call that three long. Like the dashes,’ he said. ‘So what’s that?’

  Madgie scanned the sheet.

  ‘O!’ she cried. ‘Hang on!’

  She took the metal stick from her friend’s hand and whacked it three times, like he had done in the first place.

  ‘SOS!’ she shouted, delighted with herself. ‘How cool is that?’

  It was Norbert’s turn to be a bit peeved. He was supposed to be the mastermind here. It was his idea and his bedroom and his skewer. He went to grab the stick again –

  And that’s when it happened.

  They got a reply.

  At first, Norbert thought Madgie was still playing with the skewer, but she was peering at the chart, working out how to Morse code ‘muffin’. She looked up, curious.

  ‘Do it again, Nor. I didn’t catch …’

  She stopped. The boy had turned yellow. Just like the rabbit.

  ‘Wha –’

  ‘Shhh!’ he hissed.

  There it was again. Norbert snatched the paper away from Mad Cap. That didn’t make sense! He screwed up his eyes and listened.

  He checked it again. No, he had been right the first time. Madgie glanced at the chart over his shoulder.

  ‘K,’ she deciphered ‘I-L-L. K-I-L-L? Kill what?’ She checked her chart again. ‘It’s too long, I lost it. Was it “kill the rats”?’

  ‘Not the rats,’ Norbert answered darkly. ‘The brats. It says “kill the brats”.’

  Mad Cap gulped. And then she flared into a rage.

  ‘Oh yeah? Kill the brats? Well, here’s what the brats have to say to that!’

  She picked up the skewer again and thrashed the pipe with it like a mad hard-rock drummer. The more she banged, the more urgent the menacing message came. Faster and faster, louder and louder. Madgie was laughing now, as much from relief as anything. Norbert joined in and the din became fantastic.

  Until it all ended in a long, horrifying yell that seemed to come out of the pipe.

  The two friends stopped dead. They stared at each other. And made a run for it.

  Scrambling out from under the desk was hard work. They were in each other’s way and the skewer seemed to be poking at them of its own accord. Then they were out on the carpet, running to the door, fumbling with the knob and pushing like sumo wrestlers against the thick wooden panel.

  But it wouldn’t budge. Norbert threw himself on the floor and tried to see what was blocking it. He caught a glimpse of unruly ginger hair and enormous claws. Scrum. That fat door-stopper of a cat. The mini-elephant.

  ‘We’re trapped!’ he yelled in panic.

  6

  ‘Let me think,’ Norbert panted. ‘Just let me think.’

  He was sitting on the bed, his hands pressed against his ears to block out the mad clanging from the pipe under the desk. Madgie, happy to let the genius do the thinking, was crouched in front of the door, talking sweet talk to Scrum on the other side.

  Every now and then, she would make a suggestion.

  ‘We could try the window,’ she offered.

  Norbert shook his head.

  ‘Nope. Dad painted it half shut after I tried my bungee-jumping experiment.’

  ‘How about the fireplace?’

  ‘What fireplace?’

  ‘Oh! Yeah.’

  The banging on the pipes was still going strong but at least the shouts had stopped. Now a new voice could be heard above the noise. It was shrill and cross and coming closer. Mad Cap scurried over to the bed, and she and Norbert sat there clutching each other’s arms and waiting for the worst.

  Suddenly, the bedroom door crashed open. At the same time, three things happened:

  1. Norbert’s sister appeared with a bored-looking parrot perched on her shoulder.

  2. Madgie realised that the door opened inwards and that they hadn’t been trapped after all.

  3. Norbert dropped dead.

  Well, not really. But he went all yellow again and he squeezed Mad Cap so hard she shrieked. But no one noticed, because his sister, Gloria, was yelling, ‘Stop that racket, Norbert Soup! I’m trying to teach this eejit of a bird to speak and I need … Ouch!’

  Maybe the parrot couldn’t speak, but it could obviously hear, and it didn’t like being called an eejit. Its beak clamped with a vicious snap on Gloria’s sister’s finger and she ran down the stairs, yelling some more and calling the bird all sorts of horrible names. It learnt a lot that day.

  Norbert let out a deep sigh, then he picked himself up from the bed and made for the door.

  ‘Phew!’ he said. ‘For a sec, I thought it was Mrs Mudrick.’

  ‘Norbert, this is your bedroom!’ said Madgie. ‘How come you don’t know which way the door opens?’

  ‘I was in a panic,’ Norbert explained sheepishly.

  ‘And what was that about Mrs Mudrick? What would she be doing here?’

 
‘Maybe she saw you coming in. Weren’t you supposed to bring her some meat this morning?’

  ‘Janie! I completely forgot. You’re right – she will come after me!’

  She shivered at the thought of the knitted blanket and the message on it. Fitzmarcel Die! She never ever wanted to go near that madwoman again.

  ‘We’ve got to hide you,’ Norbert decided. ‘How about your place? That box-room with the punchball and all your dad’s old Lego men?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s just decided to clear it out.’

  As she said this, she remembered what her mother had said when Dad had started on the box-room: ‘There isn’t much time left’.

  Madgie felt as if she had just been hit by a runaway breeze-block or a flying Scrum. She’d have to talk to Norbert about this. He would know what was going on and what to do.

  But for the moment he was clearly on to something else.

  ‘The den!’ he announced. ‘Under the bridge. You can hide there for a while. Go and pack a survival kit. I’ll meet you there in an hour.’

  Now that her mother had swapped all the biscuits and crisps for carrot sticks and broccoli heads, there was nothing much around the kitchen that Mad Cap wanted to have in her survival kit.

  Still, she was here now so she might as well pick up a few things. She stashed some organic wholegrain bread in a cotton bag (trying not to think of the sharp bits of cereal that always got stuck in her teeth), a measly looking apple which would probably be too floury and a bottle of plain, boring water.

  Then she ran up to her room to grab her big woolly cardi and earmuffs, but as she was crossing the landing she heard Colm stomping out of the bathroom. She could tell he was going to give her grief over the missing diary and she really didn’t have time for that.

  She jumped into the laundry basket outside his bedroom door, brought the lid down on her head and stopped breathing. Not because she thought she’d be heard, but because of the stench. It was like forty badgers had invited all their friends and relatives to a cheese fondue.

  Madgie was quickly running out of air in there, but she would stick it out. Colm wasn’t going to take all day crossing that landing and disappearing into his room, was he?