Jack Slater, Monster Investigator

by John Dougherty

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  Also by John Dougherty

  Copyright

  About the Book

  ‘MMM, YUM YUM! Eat children! Yeah!’

  Jack Slater is the world’s greatest Monster Investigator.

  He’d like to see a monster get the better of him.

  But something BIG is afoot.

  Which means only one thing . . . Jack must arm himself with his penlight torch and Freddy the Teddy and go down to the monster underworld before it’s too late.

  The question is: do the monsters feel lucky . . .?

  Well, DO they?

  A hilarious story from the author of Zeus on the Loose! and Niteracy Hour.

  To my own little monsters, with much love

  I was just in the middle of a lovely dream when my bedroom door opened and the light from the landing woke me up.

  I groaned and opened my eyes. Two timid-looking pyjama-clad figures stood there, shuffling sheepishly.

  “Um . . . please can we sleep in your room tonight?” one of them said.

  I groaned again, and sat up. “What’s wrong?” I asked, even though I knew what the answer would be.

  “There’s a monster under our bed!”

  Sighing, I swung my feet out of bed and into my slippers. This was the third time in a week, and I was starting to get a bit tired of it.

  “All right,” I said. “You two snuggle up in here and go back to sleep. I’ll deal with the monster.”

  “Be careful, son,” said the taller one.

  “I will, Dad,” I said. “Sleep well. ’Night, Mum.”

  I closed the bedroom door behind me, and switched the landing light off. My parents don’t believe it, but a light outside the bedroom does nothing to keep monsters away. It just makes them harder to see.

  Poor Mum and Dad, though. It can’t be easy for them having a son who’s – though I say it myself – the world’s greatest Monster Investigator.

  I took a deep breath when I reached their room. The big double bed was right against the furthest wall, and I had to get to it in under five seconds. Walking. One of the first things you learn as a Monster Investigator is that most of the stuff kids make up to keep monsters away actually works. Hands up if you’ve ever counted to five while you got into bed?

  I thought so.

  OK, I said to myself, here we go.

  “One . . .” I counted aloud, stepping into the room.

  “Two . . .” Walking as quickly as I could, but not running. You mustn’t run, or they’ll get you.

  “Three . . .” Nearly at the bed now, but I had to get into it by five. Properly under the covers, up to the shoulders.

  “Four . . .” I reached the bed and jumped onto it. Once you get to the bed, you can go as quickly as you like, but you have to keep counting, fair and square.

  “Five!” Just in time, I snuggled down under the thick, warm duvet and breathed a sigh of relief. Not that I was really scared, of course – I’d like to see the monster that could get the better of me. But I wanted it to think I was.

  I waited, listening, while my hand slipped my secret weapon – my trusty penlight torch – out of one of my pyjama pockets.

  Then, from under the bed, I heard it. A shuffling noise, ever so quiet but definitely there. It was a big one. I listened carefully until I could tell which way it was facing. And I was just about to leap out of bed and blast the monster away with a pencil-thin beam of battery-powered light, when it spoke.

  “Jack?” it said. “It’s me!”

  Recognizing the voice, I lowered my torch.

  “Bernard!” I sighed, relieved. “What are you doing here?”

  Bernard was my best informant in the monster underworld. If anything big was going down, he’d hear about it – and then I’d hear about it. No question, he was really valuable to me.

  He was also in one of his moods.

  “Hey,” he growled, “I’ve told you. Don’t call me Bernard! I’m just a monster with no name! I mean, I reckon I deserve a bit of respect after all the help I’ve given you, and anyhow—”

  Usually when Bernard – which is his name, by the way – gets going like this I just listen, and wait till he’s got it out of his system. But something told me we didn’t have time for this.

  “Not now, Bernard!” I interrupted.

  “OK, OK,” he muttered. “So do you want to hear the news, or don’t you?”

  I wanted to hear it, all right. Bernard had never appeared under my parents’ bed before. Usually if he had some information for me, he’d leave a note under my bed asking me to switch off my monster-traps at, say, eight o’clock, and then he’d come through and talk to me. So for him just to appear in my house must have meant something that couldn’t wait.

  “Sure I do,” I told him. “What’s up?”

  There was another shuffling noise. Then a sound like a drain being unblocked – which was, I realized after a moment, Bernard clearing his throat. Then, more shuffling.

  It sounded like Bernard was nervous about something. Really nervous.

  “Come on, Bernard, spit it out,” I said.

  This time, he didn’t even notice me use his name. This was one rattled monster.

  “OK, OK,” he spat. “Listen up, kid, and listen good. Something big is going down – I mean real big. The word under the streets is: no more hiding under beds in the dark scaring itty-bitty little kids. The underworld is getting organized.”

  A cold feeling crept over my skin, like a wave of small determined spiders.

  “What do you mean, organized?” I demanded. “Monsters don’t organize! What have you always told me, Bernard? It’s a monster-eat-monster world down there! Every monster for himself!”

  “Not any more,” he assured me. “Not all of us monsters is happy about it – but they got ways of making us . . . co-operate.” As he said this, his voice trembled a little.

  I suddenly realized – Bernard wasn’t just nervous; he was terrified.

  “Who’s making you co-operate?” I said. “And co-operate with what?”

  He gulped – a long slow noise like a snake swallowing a dromedary – and said:

  “OK, Jack, listen real carefully. I’m gonna tell you the whole story. But the main thing you gotta know is—”

  And then there was a sound like a thousand people screaming a long way off, and another sound like a huge heavy wooden door closing – THUNK!

  Then there was silence.

  “Bernard?” I said. “Bernard, are you OK?”

  But Bernard didn’t answer.

  Clutching my penlight torch, I leaped off the bed and crouched down low.

  “Bernard?” I said again.

  Still no answer.

  I kept one thumb firmly on the switch of the torch and my eyes glued to the dark space under Mum and Dad’s bed. With the other hand I grabbed a toy sword and waved it around where Bernard should have been.

  Nothing. The space under the bed was empty. Bernard was gone.

  Assuming, of course, that he was as big as I’d always thought. I’d never actually seen him.

  Just in case, I said, “Bernard? If you are still th
ere, time to go, because I’m going to count to five and then switch the torch on. OK? One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . FIVE!”

  I flicked the switch.

  There was nothing there.

  Nothing except a lot of fluff and a crumpled piece of paper.

  I swept the torch-beam left and right, just to be certain, and then reached in and took the piece of paper. I left the fluff.

  The piece of paper turned out to be a note. Written by a hand that obviously wasn’t used to holding a pen – and probably wasn’t the right shape for it anyway – it said:

  Unfortunately, the next day was a school day. I woke up late, got to school late, and almost fell asleep in assembly. And I don’t know how many times I got told off that morning for not listening in class.

  The reason I don’t know how many times I got told off for not listening, is that I wasn’t listening. I was thinking.

  I was thinking about Bernard, and wondering what he had been about to tell me.

  I was thinking about the note – ‘Hand in your badge’ it had said. It meant, of course, my official Monster Investigator badge.

  And I was thinking about the talk in the playground. One of the kids at school had just become the latest victim of the criminals they were calling Ghost Burglars – burglars who could get into a house without breaking any locks or windows. Burglars who could sneak into your room without waking you, and steal all your newest, coolest stuff from right by your bed while you lay asleep.

  I almost began to wonder if the Ghost Burglars could really be Monster Burglars – but none of the stuff they were stealing was of any use to a monster. Monsters don’t wear designer clothes or expensive trainers; they can’t watch DVDs or play computer games or even use a mobile phone because of the light from the screens.

  No, the Ghost Burglars were someone else’s problem. I had a problem of my own to solve.

  A Missing Monster problem.

  After school, I went to the Ministry.

  The Ministry of Monsters is different from all the other government departments in a number of ways:

  Firstly – it’s a secret. Everyone knows there’s a Minister in charge of schools; most grown-ups can tell you the name of the Minister in charge of prisons and police and so on; but hardly anyone would ever believe there’s a Minister for Monsters.

  Secondly – most of the other ministries have classy offices in Whitehall, up in the centre of London. The Ministry of Monsters is based in an expensive treehouse in the back garden of one of the posh houses a few streets away from where I live.

  And thirdly – Clyde Pumfrey-Soames, Minister for Monsters, is the only government minister who hasn’t grown up yet.

  I flashed my ‘Government Appointed Monster Investigator’ badge at the two heavies guarding the rope ladder, and made my way up to Clyde’s office. Clyde looked up as I entered, went bright red, and crammed a magazine he was reading into his desk drawer.

  “Don’t you ever knock?” he demanded furiously.

  “Nope,” I answered, eyeballing him right back. I didn’t like Clyde much, but he was the one who could make things happen. After a moment he looked away, which gave me time to look round and work out what was different about his office.

  Not that it took much working out. Clyde’s the most spoiled kid I know – probably the most spoiled kid anybody knows – but most of the expensive presents he gets given are, to be honest, pretty nerdy. I think his dad has firm ideas about what’s “good” for a growing boy, and what isn’t. Either that, or he’s just got no taste at all.

  Something, though, had obviously changed in the Pumfrey-Soames household. The office was piled high with incredibly cool stuff – too cool for Clyde, in my opinion, and way too cool for a treehouse. There was a widescreen plasma TV on the wall, for instance, and a brand new DVD player underneath it. He had all the latest movies in a rack nearby, too. Come to that, he looked a bit different himself – he was wearing much, much cooler and trendier clothes than usual, and a pair of the most expensive-looking trainers I’d ever seen.

  “Did Christmas come early, Clyde?” I asked him. “Or – no, don’t tell me – you’re the Ghost Burglar everyone’s talking about!”

  “Don’t be stupid, Slater,” Clyde scowled. “My dad’s got enough money to buy me anything I want. You know that. Why would I need to steal?”

  “Yeah, and how would you get into anyone’s house without tripping over your own feet, anyway?” I retorted.

  It’s true about the money. Clyde’s dad, you see, is a multi-millionaire – the boss of Pumfrey-Soames Furniture PLC. You’ve seen the ads – ‘Pumfrey-Soames for comfy homes’.

  That’s how come we have a Ministry of Monsters, in fact. Clyde’s dad pays for everything – which is why Clyde gets to be the Minister. And being so rich and important, Mr Pumfrey-Soames even got his friend the Prime Minister to make the Ministry an official Government Department – on paper, at least. I’d never known Clyde to get quite so much stuff from his dad all at once, though. Maybe the old man was just in a good mood.

  Unlike his little boy.

  “So did you just come up here to give me cheek, Slater,” he snapped, “or is there something I can do for you?”

  It was time to get down to business. I explained about Bernard turning up in the middle of the night, and disappearing before he could finish warning me.

  Clyde listened, nodding.

  “Now the way I see it,” I went on, “there are two things you could do. You could call all the registered Monster Investigators in the country and ask them what their informers are saying.”

  I paused. What I was about to suggest was going to sound crazy.

  “Or you could send someone into the monster underworld to find out for themselves.”

  Sending an Investigator into the monster underworld was the most dangerous idea I’d ever had, and I wasn’t sure how Clyde would react.

  I thought he might say, “No way. Too risky.”

  I thought he might say, “OK, Slater, see you when you get back – if you get back.”

  I thought he might say, “We need more information before I can agree to that.”

  He didn’t say any of these things.

  Instead, he leaned back, in this superior way he has – like he’s trying to pretend he’s not just a kid like the rest of us – and put his hands together like he was about to play “here’s the church and here’s the steeple”. Then he smiled smugly, and said, “Don’t you think you’re taking all this a bit too seriously?”

  Too seriously? If I was right, this would be the biggest thing the Ministry of Monsters had ever dealt with! I was just about to say, “Were you actually listening, Clyde?” when it hit me.

  Clyde was trying to grow up.

  And if he was trying to be more grown-up, then slowly but surely he was going to stop believing in monsters.

  Because grown-ups don’t believe in monsters under the bed. Even my mum and dad only believe in them when they’re woken by one during the night; then in the morning they’re all, oh, silly us, what imaginations. It’s as if daylight does something to their brains. So if Clyde was trying to grow up, he was going to believe in monsters less and less.

  Sure enough, he gave me this big speech about how maybe we should stop playing games and start trying to properly help all those children who were scared of monsters “when there’s really no reason to be”.

  Then – all pleased with himself – he showed me a glossy brochure. Something he’d been working on.

  “The sort of thing the Ministry should really be doing,” he said.

  I have to admit it made sense, in a screwy kind of way.

  It turns out that Clyde had designed this new bed for kids, and his dad liked it so much that Pumfrey-Soames Furniture had already made thousands of them.

  “They’ll be in the shops tomorrow!” Clyde said excitedly. “Dad loves the design! He says it’ll be his biggest-selling bed ever – which, by the way, is the reason he’
s so pleased with me at the moment.

  “The idea is, the bed is strong but really light, and it’s on wheels. We call it the skatebed.

  “The parents will all want them because it’s easy to move them when you’re vacuuming the room, so you can clean under the bed every week. The kids will all want them because you can kick off from the walls and scoot around the room on them when you’re supposed to be asleep.

  “And the punch-line is: if a kid is scared of a monster during the night, Mum or Dad can just whisk the bed aside and show them – look, no monster.”

  Of course, Mum or Dad would think that’s because the monster was never there. You and I know that it’s because as soon as the monster gets into the light – poof! It vanishes. And Clyde knows that, too – when he’s not trying to be Mr Grown-Up.

  So like I said, it makes sense.

  Except that, if the monsters were organizing, I didn’t think an extra-light bed on wheels was going to stop them. I told Clyde so.

  And he said, like he was my favourite uncle or something, “Jack, believe me, when you get to my age you’ll realize that monsters under the bed are really nothing to worry about.”

  “Yeah, Clyde?” I snapped back. “So how come you still keep floodlights on under your bed all night?”

  “There’s no point talking to you, is there?” he spluttered, going bright red again. “You’re just a kid! What do you know?”

  “I know plenty, Clyde!” I yelled. “I know that monsters are real, and they’re dangerous, and if you could think about anything else except filling your office with presents from your rich daddy, you’d be as worried as I am! Well, I’ve got news for you, Clyde! All this stuff you’ve got won’t make you any smarter, or any better, and it certainly won’t make you any more popular!”

  He blushed so hot I could have fried an egg on his face.

  “You are so immature,” he said. He turned and looked out the window so I couldn’t see how embarrassed he was. I took the opportunity to lean over his desk, slide his drawer open, and swipe the magazine he’d been reading when I came in.