by Susan Berran
“Oh bull! You’re not funny!” whined WHEEZY REESE.
“Neither were the clowns” I replied as Jared and me walked off.
But we made sure that we hid our utility belts really well for the trip, especially from Jared’s POXY brothers. Otherwise they’d probably try to nick our stash of ‘LOADED’ nappies that we’d been storing up and hiding for ages. They’re going to be extra ripe by the time we get to use them. Or they’ll try to nick some of our other stuff from us. And I definitely didn’t want Jelly Melly to find it and tell Mum about our utility belts either, somehow I didn’t think Mum would be too thrilled about the way we were using Granny’s undies.
Anyway, we’d managed to sneak our utility belts into our backpacks for the excursion, but we were only able to hide a couple of loaded nappies each. I wasn’t really worried that much, we knew there’d be plenty more ‘AMMUNITION’ along the way. And once we got there, thanks to Miss ‘continuous poopy machine’ Melly, there’d be fresh ammunition being produced about every five minutes or so. That was one thing we could be sure of.
On the bus trip, everyone was wondering what the revoltingly disgusting stench was. So we just blamed DUFAS and DORKY, because Jared knew they’d eaten baked beans for breakkie.
By the time we arrived it was getting dark, so we only had about five minutes to get set up. Everyone just grabbed a spot, rolled out their sleeping bags and dumped their back packs. So me and Jared thought we may as well start trying to prepare the others by warning everyone and letting them know just how dangerous it was going to be. We even showed them the articles we’d downloaded from the internet.
Not that we were trying to SCARE them from going in or anything. . . he he he.
We just thought it would be really helpful to show all of the others how it was a well-known area for seeing strange lights, venomous spiders, huge weird insects, reptiles that were supposed to be extinct and all sorts of other dangerous and weird stuff. They even reckoned there’s been some sort of humungous hairy BEAST, like ‘BIG FOOT’, or a ‘YETI’, seen around there . . . Jared reckons it was probably just a bear. Just a bear!
BUT no-one was listening, they didn’t believe us.
It was USELESS.
The teachers told the little kids that me and Jared were 'over-reacting’ and there was absolutely no evidence to show that anyone had ever died there . . . YEAH RIGHT.
Probably because no-one’s body had ever been found . . . YET!
We even tried to be all caring and tell our mums about it, but they were all . . .
“Don’t you scare the little kids.”
“If they have nightmares you two will have to sing them to sleep with lullabies.”
“If the little kids mess their pants you’re cleaning it up . . . which includes washing out their sleeping bags.”
But the teachers HAD to know what was in there. We knew that they’d done the research before coming here, we’d overheard them talking about it only a few days before we left.
So while everyone else was sitting there and munching away on some snacks and getting ready to crawl into their sleeping bags, me and Jared ripped off our shoes and socks and snuck around behind the teachers and our mums to listen in on their conversation.
As we got closer we could hear them all laughing as they discussed the details about who would be in who’s group and Mrs Duckson was going on about how there were a couple of kids she’d be quite happy to send in and that she wouldn’t be too upset if they didn’t reappear either. We could tell they were talking about the ‘sooky siblings’; TOFFEE and TANTRUM. because they were just about cacking their daks and saying stuff like . . . “eeee, someone took my dolly” in TOFFEE'S voice and . . . “wah, that tree dropped a leaf on me” and “arrhh, the wind hit me, on purpose” in Tia’s voice.
WOW, they were actually pretty good too.
96
Then all of a sudden the teachers leapt up out of their seats and headed our way.
AarrRh! I whizzed around on the spot and smacked straight into Jared. He fell flat on his back. . . WHAM! I stomped on his gut with one foot and hooked the toes of my other foot right up his nostrils as I scrambled across his body in the race to get outta there. I dragged his body along by the nose for a few seconds as I tried to yank my toes outta there . . . thoop . . . out they popped as Jared quickly twisted up onto his feet to follow me.
Ha, interesting . . . I thought Jared’s nasal slime would make me slip’n’slide all over the place, but it actually gave me better grip under that foot.
So anyway, we took off around the corner and got back to where everyone else was sitting, just as Mrs Duckson and Miss Croonarc came around the corner behind us.
PheW.
Then, with only about ten minutes before it was completely dark, the teachers began to organize us and tell us who would be in whose group. Then they got us to start drawing up maps of the area so that we wouldn’t get lost and we’d be able to find our way back if we were separated from the rest of our group.
They were obviously planning to send different groups into different areas to search. I guess that way they’d get us to cover the most ground and get back the most information on whatever we found . . . CLEVER.
“Ok” said Mrs Duckson in her booming raspy voice, “Get a good night’s sleep, because first thing tomorrow you’ll be getting to work. . . I mean, have fun!”
Me and Jared were starting to wonder though . . . what if they were serious and really did want to ‘lose’ a couple of kids. And just maybe they’d give them a little hand getting ‘lost’ somehow.
Me and Jared weren’t taking any chances. We decided to make sure that there was absolutely NO WAY they could get hold of OUR map to ‘SABOTAGE IT’. We didn’t want anyone going anywhere near it, just to be sure it wasn’t tampered with. And to make doubly sure, we decided to take turns staying awake all that first night, just in case.
“Sam . . . are you awake Sam?” Jared spat into my ear as he whispered loudly.
“What?” I said only half awake, but really annoyed.
“Listen.”
It was the middle of the night, pitch black and I couldn’t even see my hand right in front of my face. But Jared was freaking out. He could hear footsteps,BIG HEAVY footsteps . . .
. . . THUD THUD THUD . . . and now I could hear them too!
I stayed totally calm, naturally, but I could feel the vibration of Jared shivering right beside me. He was shivering more than a naked mole rat in a freezer buried in the snow at the North Pole.
. . . THUD THUD THUD . . . I started to feel around for the torch, trying to find it as fast as possible, but at the same time as quietly as possible.
. . . THUD THUD THUD . . . all around us shook as the footsteps were almost upon us.
Where was that torch!?! We held our breath as . . .
. . . THUD THUD THUD . . . in the pitch black it went right by us!
We decided not to wake everyone. There’d be mass panic, a stampede and I’d probably have to save everyone . . . AS USUAL.
Where was the damn torch?
. . . THUD THUD THUD . . . the solid thumping steps were heading away. It had to be here somewhere . . . socks . . . watch . . . SNAP! OWW!! . . . mouse trap . . . clothes . . . Mr Bunny Wunny, huh . . . I have absolutely NO idea whose that is or how it got in there! . . . more socks . . . sniff sniff . . . undies . . . a warm puddle . . .
“Ohh Jared!”
. . . shoes . . . torch . . . pillo . . . torch! YES!
I flicked on the torch, but there was nothing there. I shone it all around our area, nothing. Whatever it was it was long gone, without leaving a trace, but then when I shone the torch at Jared I nearly freaked. His eyes were like dinner plates, wide and round. His mouth was stuck open and mozzies were sitting on his wide pink tongue. Hmmm, that was going to be interesting in the morning. He was as white as a ghost in a snow-storm and he hadn’t blinked for the longest time.
Without a word, he suddenly plucked s
omething from his arm and held it up to the torchlight. FUR! Thick, straight, black fur. It seemed to take forever, but finally he very shakily said two words . . . “BIG FOOT.” Or is that one word because it’s actually his name? I’m never sure. Anyway, he still hadn’t blinked so I brought my hand up really close to his forehead, folded a finger onto my thumb and . . . FLICK! WHACK! I flicked him on the head, he blinked, it worked. But then I under-stood why he was so freaked out. If the fur had actually landed on his arm, then whatever it was that had been stomping around, had brushed up against him!
Jared had just had a ‘very close encounter of the very hairy kind’.
Maybe now everyone would believe us and we could get out of there. The only trouble was, that we still had half of the night to go and now it was my turn to stay awake. But I wasn’t going to let whatever it was getaway again. I kept one hand next to the torch and the other . . . well, I used my ‘Bulravian Automatic All Night Alarm System’ . . . it’s actually a mouse trap that I keep SNAPPING on my fingers to stay awake.
It was about three in the morning when I suddenly heard something that gave me goosebumps giving piggy-back rides to bigger goosebumps and made every single hair on my entire body stand up and shiver like a bellydancer in the snow. Weird scary noises, agonizing moaning and groaning echoed all around . . . IT WAS BACK!
“EERRRR . . . OOWWW . . . AARRRR!!” I stayed in my sleeping bag and lay there completely still and barely breathing. I wasn’t game enough to move. I just laid in the dark, hoping like crazy that someone else would wake up and hear whatever it was.
“EERRRR . . . OOWWWW . . . AARRRR!!”
It was getting louder and louder, closer and closer! It sounded like some sort of DEADLY animal in terrible pain, almost weeping in agony. I was frozen to the spot, it was so close, very close. I could smell its moldy, putrid breath . . . eewww, TOO CLOSE! I could smell rotting meat and onions as it passed right by me in the pitch black and for a second there, I thought I was going to be tasting my dinner again as well, if you get my drift.
But I knew that if I flicked on the torch and SPOOKED it, whatever it was, I’d be DEAD meat for sure. I wasn’t taking any chances. I waited until I knew it had gone past. Buckets of sweat continued to pour off me, rolling down and around my body and saturating my sleeping bag. If anyone was to shine a light on me right now, they’d probably think that I’d had a little accident, you know . . . of the body waste kind. Quietly I kept on trying to wake Jared. Poking and prodding him, I even pinched him a couple of times, but he didn’t even flinch, not a muscle . . . man he’s a solid sleeper.
“EERRRR . . . OOWWW . . . AARRRR!!”
There was only one sure way to wake him. I kept feeling all around him, searching him. Ah Ha, HIS FACE! And there was just what I was searching for. I reached down into my sleeping-bag and quickly took off my thick woollen sweaty socks that I’d been wearing around all day. Rolled them into a tight ball and then feeling around carefully, I shoved them into Jared’s mouth. I then very gently felt around some more, lined up my longest fingernails, then with one short sharp pull I reached in and YANKED out a couple of his longest nose hairs.
"###!!! hmfff pptt pptt ppttt!” Jared mumbled as he sprung straight up. But before he could spit the socks out of his mouth, I realised that the weird noise had stopped. Whatever it was, it was gone, just as suddenly as it had appeared . . . again.
Jared’s eyes were all red and swollen. He had tears of pain rolling down his cheeks. He really didn’t look very happy either. He was in so much pain that he reckoned he’d never get back to sleep . . . what a SOOKY LAH LAH. That was when I figured out that there was no need for us both to stay awake for the rest of the night. So if Jared said he couldn’t sleep . . . then I might as well.
I was so glad when morning finally came around. Me and Jared figured that there’d probably be a heap of other kids that had heard the CREATURE during the night as well, there maybe even a few missing kids. We waited . . . and waited . . . but none of them said a word, apparently they hadn’t heard or seen a thing. How could they ALL have slept through that?
Maybe because they’re all YOCALS, so they’re used to weird animal noises. But me and Jared knew those noises hadn’t been made by any ordinary animal. So we headed straight to Miss Croonarc and told her about everything that we’d heard; the slow, dragging footsteps, the sick-ening deep growling, the thick, black hairy fur. She looked pretty shocked and maybe even a bit SCARED. But we figured it was better to tell her than Mrs Duckson. Mrs Duckson would probably just tell us to ‘SUCK IT UP’ and stop trying to scare the little kids.
Miss Croonarc tried to tell us that there was a very rational explanation, but that she’d have to explain it to us later, because she was too busy at the moment. We knew it was bull and we could tell that was not what she was thinking.
As we headed back to our sleeping bags, we quickly leapt out of sight and ducked behind some stuff where we could spy on the adults again and try to figure out what was really going on.
Yep, just as we figured, the moment they thought we were gone Miss Croonarc swivelled around and took off like a bunny rabbit on a hot-plate in the direction of Mrs Duckson’s area. When she came back a while later she was definitely shaking and a whole lot paler. All of a sudden our mums and Miss Croonarc were in a tight little huddle, talking really quietly and desperately making notes, but constantly looking over their shoulders towards the kids to make sure that no-one was heading their way. We could tell that they were really nervous, it was so obvious. Something was going on. Something they definitely didn’t want any of us to know anything about.
Over breakfast all of the kids were mucking around and yelling so much that no-one noticed they hadn’t seen, or heard from Mrs Duckson. But me and Jared were watching everything and we noticed that all of Mrs Ducksons’ stuff had been packed up. Her back-pack zipped to the very top and her sleeping area was completely silent. We could tell by the silence that no-one was in there . . . well, no-one ALIVE.
Miss Croonarc managed to keep us busy all morning, making sure that we didn’t get time to wander anywhere. We spent the entire day finishing our maps and listening to heaps of boring lectures on ‘ h o w t o s t a y s a f e ’ and ‘ w h a t t o d o i f y o u ’ r e l o s t . ’ But most of the lessons were on ‘ h o w t o r e c o g n i z e f o s s i l s a n d o t h e r v a l u a b l e s ’. And every hour or so, Miss Croonarc would race away for a short while and come back looking all flustered. Lunch came and went and by late afternoon there was still no sign of Mrs Duckson and some of the kids were starting to ask questions.
It almost seemed like Miss Croonarc was making up even more boring lessons, if that was possible, just to keep us all busy and out of the way.
Me and Jared were starting to get a bit nervous ourselves. The sun was going down, we’d just about finished our dinner and we still hadn’t begun to look around. But that was about to change . . . suddenly Jared’s mum piped up . . .
“As soon as you’ve put away your dinner gear get back here with your maps. You’ve got three minutes! ”
WHAT?! They had to be kidding! We couldn’t go in . . . IN THE DARK . . . could we? But we supposed that at least now we were going to get some answers and find out what was going on around here.
As soon as everyone was organised, we all gathered around and waited for Mrs Duckson to finally turn up and give us her final instructions. We had our maps, we had our gear, we were ready. But where was Mrs Duckson?
Suddenly Miss Croonarc stood up and began to re-sort the groups . . .
“Mrs Duckson won’t be joining us tonight I’m afraid” she announced ,“so Sam, Jared, Boris, Reese and Thomas, you’re now together. We’re letting you go in without adult supervision. Don’t get lost! You have your map. Stay together . . . right?”
“Yes!” we chorused.
That was it? No explanation of where Mrs Duckson was, nothing! They obviously didn’t want us to know that the ‘something’ we heard the night
before had ‘GOTTEN’ her and she obviously wasn’t coming back. Miss Croonarc was probably trying to call for help from the school bus each time she disappeared. And obviously we can’t leave until Mrs Ducksons’ body is found.
“Miss Croonarc?” Wheezy asked almost whispering. “It’s dark. Shouldn’t we wait until daylight to go in?”
“Nope!” she shot back. “It’s all arranged. Each group has snacks, a torch and a map. It’s quite s-s-s-safe” she said with a very obvious tremble in her voice. “Oh . . . don’t forget . . . if you find anything that looks like it might be valuable . . . don’t touch it! Mark it clearly on your map to show us later.”
And with that, each group was pointed in a different direction and headed off into the darkness.
Aha! So that was the plan. It was all starting to make sense now. . . to me anyway. I’d probably have to explain it to Jared a few times.
Send in thirty something kids, bring back twenty something . . . maybe. And if the teachers were lucky, some of the kids might pick up a few ‘SOUVENIRS’, maybe a fossil, maybe even find TREASURE And we were betting that Mrs Duckson had already been dragged in there, somewhere. So there was a very good chance that some of us would probably be joining her. Yep, they were sending us straight to our DOOM . . . and of course to find treasure that we weren’t allowed to keep.
Gee, that’s fair. . . NOT!
We watched nervously as the other groups all headed off in different directions, quickly disappearing into the darkness. They wouldn’t be so EXCITED if they knew what was really in store for them.
It was our turn. Me and Jared took the lead. We knew WHEEZY, Booga and TOFFEE would shuffle along and stick together like a herd of magnetic boogers . . . especially because I had the only torch. Now if we could just find a way to shove them out in front of us as bait. Then at least we’d have time to make a run for it when we needed to.
There was barely any light left as we reached the entrance, and once inside, it was complete darkness, no light, nothing, we were on our own.
