by Angie Sage
We all packed up our rucksacks and I checked to see that my bat box was still safe. I peeked in and Baby Bat was fast asleep, which was good. Then Wanda and I put Uncle Drac’s hats on.
Nosy Nora burst out laughing. “You two look soooooo stupid,” she said.
“Really, really stupid,” Creepy Cora agreed. “Whoever goes around wearing knitted animals on their heads?”
Wanda looked cross. “Araminta and I do, so there,” she told them.
“Ooh,” mimicked Nosy Nora. “‘Araminta and I do, so there.’”
“Oh, get over it, Nora,” I muttered. Uncle Drac had spent weeks knitting our hats and I didn’t like them being laughed at, however silly they might look.
“Get over it yourself, tentacle head,” snapped Nora.
“Seagull brain,” Cora giggled, staring at Wanda’s hat. Wanda stuck her tongue out at her.
“No fighting, please, girls!” Miss Gargoyle’s squeaky voice came trilling from the back of the hut. “Remember now, Gargoyle Girls Get Along, Gargoyle Girls Sing a Happy Song!”
Wanda wanted to carry the clipboard because she loves ticking boxes with cute little red pens, but Bossy Bella gave it to Nosy Nora. While Nosy Nora and Creepy Cora decided who was going to carry the pen, Wanda said, “You didn’t finish your story, Araminta. You didn’t tell them about the pirate skeleton ghosts.”
“What pirate skeleton ghosts?” asked Nosy Nora, who has big flappy ears and hears everything.
“They are too scary for you,” Wanda told her scathingly.
“I’m not scared of anything,” Nosy Nora said.
“Nora is very brave,” Creepy Cora said. “Much braver than two weeds wearing silly hats.”
“Oh yes?” I said.
“Oh yes, tentacle head,” said Nora. She laughed. “I bet it was your creepy vampire uncle who made your silly hats, ha ha!”
I had had enough. No one calls my lovely uncle Drac a creepy vampire. I decided to give Nosy Nora the biggest scare of her life. Ever.
I remembered from when Uncle Drac and I had explored Skeleton Island that the bat cave was not far away from the jetty. The bat cave was dark, smelly and full of bats and I knew it would be just the place to show Nosy Nora that she was not nearly as brave as she and Creepy Cora thought she was.
The rest of our class were heading up the steps that led to the top of the island—to find boring stones and bits of grass I suppose—but just as Nosy Nora was about to push in front and go the same way I said, “Let’s go this way. Down to Shipwreck Beach.”
Nosy Nora and Creepy Cora looked at each other. I could tell they were suspicious. “Why?” asked Creepy Cora.
“Because there are some interesting rocks along here. We can get them before anyone else.” I knew that Creepy Cora always likes to be first with everything.
“Oh,” she said. “All right then, Araminta.”
So while everyone else was climbing up to the top of the island like a trail of ants, we walked back below the cliff, crossed over the jetty and followed a little path that dropped down on to a small sandy beach. We walked past an old stone hut with half of its walls and most of its roof blown away. This was called the “Last Resort” on my map and Uncle Drac said it was where pirates had once sheltered.
“Is this Shipwreck Beach?” Wanda asked as we walked across the sand.
I knew Nosy Nora was listening hard and I thought I might as well begin scaring her as soon as possible, so I said, “Yes. This is where the pirate ship the Cutlass Kate was wrecked. Look, there she is!” The tide was going out and you could just see the timbers of the old pirate ship poking up through the water. They looked like the black bones of a huge stranded whale; they were festooned with seaweed and some had seagulls sitting on them.
“Were the pirates washed ashore too?” Wanda asked. She knew that I wanted to scare Nosy Nora and Creepy Cora and I could tell she was asking me what detectives call leading questions. When I grow up one of the things I want to be is a chief detective. I am training Wanda up to be my sidekick and I was very pleased that she had learned something. Of course, Wanda did not know what I was planning with the bat cave, but a chief detective does not tell her sidekick everything.
“They were washed ashore at this very spot,” I said. “More dead than alive.”
“Poor pirates,” Wanda said, sounding a little bit like Mavis.
“So what?” said Nosy Nora. “It served them right. Pirates are not nice.”
It was a bit weird to hear Nosy Nora say exactly what I thought about pirates, but there was no way I was going to let her know that I agreed with her. We wandered down the beach to look at the shipwreck. Its timbers stuck up like fingers grasping for air and when I thought about all the horrible things that must have happened on that ship, I got goose pimples.
But Nosy Nora wasn’t impressed. “It’s just a manky old boat,” she said. “My dad’s got loads of those. Come on, let’s find some rocks.” And Nora set off back up the beach with Cora hurrying after her. Nosy Nora got to the foot of the cliff and stood waiting for me and Wanda, tapping her foot impatiently. She thought she was in charge, but I was about to show her that she wasn’t.
Wanda and I walked slowly up the beach and I kept looking over my shoulder as though something nasty might be following us. When we got to Nora and Cora, Wanda said—just like I’d told her to—“What are you looking for, Araminta?”
“Skeletons,” I whispered.
“What skeletons?” Cora whispered back.
“They say that at every full moon, when it shines its ghostly white light on to the beach, you will see something white, smooth and round breaking the surface. Just about there.”
I pointed down the beach to a small rock that the sea was swirling around. Nora, Cora and Wanda stared at the rock. A gull flew overhead, making a spooky screeching sound.
“What do you mean, Araminta?” Cora whispered.
I glanced around again as if checking no one was listening. “You will see a skull.”
Cora gasped and then pretended she hadn’t.
Nora gulped.
“A pirate’s skull, Araminta?” Wanda asked in an excited whisper.
“Yes,” I said. “And it rises up out of the water until you can see its whole skeleton. And then you will see another one. And another. Until there is a whole pirate crew of skeletons.”
Nora gasped and then pretended she hadn’t.
Cora gulped.
And then Nora remembered that she was not meant to be scared. “That’s just a stupid story,” she said.
But Wanda didn’t think so. “Why do you think they come ashore?” she asked.
“They are looking for their treasure. Obviously,” said Nora, who thinks she knows everything.
I didn’t like the way that Nora was taking over my story. Pirate ghosts belonged to me, not Nosy Nora, so I quickly said, “And I know where it is.”
This was too much for Nosy Nora. “Where?” she demanded.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly tell you,” I said. “I am sworn to secrecy.” Nothing gets to Nosy Nora as much as not being in on a secret.
“But you can tell me,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“What about me?” Cora butted in. “It’s not fair if you tell Nora but not me, is it, Wanda?”
Wanda didn’t answer. I could tell that even though Wanda didn’t know exactly what was going on, she knew I was “up to something”, as Aunt Tabby would say. Luckily, Wanda had been my friend and sidekick for long enough to know that the best thing to do was to keep quiet and see what happened.
“I suppose I could show you both,” I said. “If you will promise never, ever to tell where the secret treasure cave is.”
“We promise!” Nora and Cora said together.
“Never, ever, tell?” I asked.
“Never, ever, tell!”
“All right then,” I said. “Follow me. And keep quiet; we don’t want anyone else to see us.”
I led the way
along the path that Uncle Drac and I had taken. It wound between the rocks and went up the cliff. It was very steep and narrow and I had forgotten how dark and damp it was. I could just imagine pirates bringing their treasure up here on a stormy night. I shivered and had to tell myself that I was making up the whole story—pirates, treasure and everything—and there was no need for me to be scared. But even so, I was. Just a little bit.
About halfway up the cliff we came to a deep gully branching off from the path. It dropped down between some tall rocks and led to the bat cave. The gulley was even narrower than the path and I remembered how Uncle Drac had almost got stuck on the way out and how I had had to push him past a rock. Looking at the gulley now I was amazed Uncle Drac had got down it at all.
“Do we have to go down there?” Nora asked doubtfully.
“If you want to see the pirate treasure you do,” I told her. I was almost hoping that Nora would say that she didn’t want to see it any more, as the gulley felt very creepy indeed. But Nora put on an I-don’t-care kind of voice and said, “Of course I want to see it, stupid,” and so I had to keep going.
I walked sideways like a crab, slipping and sliding on the gravel. Behind me I could hear Nora going, “Ouch! Ouch!” as she skidded into a rock. Luckily, the gulley was not very long. It soon opened out on to a smooth platform of rock where the dark mouth of the bat cave was. It was really gloomy and cold there. I took out my torch—I always carry my emergency kit of a torch and a ball of string in my pocket—and shone it into the cave.
“Ooh,” Cora said, sounding a bit nervous.
“Well, we’ve seen it now,” Nora said. “So we can go, can’t we?”
“If you’re too scared to see the pirate treasure, of course you can go,” I told her.
“I’m not scared,” Nora said. “But it’s only a boring old cave. And you are only making up stories about pirate treasure, Araminta.”
“I’m going down to have a look anyway,” I said. “And when I come back with some pirate gold you’ll be sorry you were too scared.”
“We are not scared,” Nora said. “Come on, Cora, let’s go in and see the treasure.”
I led Nora and Cora into the cave. It was so low that I could reach up and touch the ceiling. We crept across the sandy floor and then, right at the back, we came to a deep pit with sheer sides. Nora and Cora hadn’t noticed but the walls of the pit were covered with little black, furry bats. There must have been thousands of them. Uncle Drac had left a ladder so that he could visit the bats whenever he came to the island, and I shone the torch on the ladder. “That’s the pirates’ ladder,” I told them. “It goes down to their treasure.”
Nora and Cora peered into the pit. “What kind of treasure?” Cora said doubtfully.
“Oh, pieces of eight, doubloons, diamonds, that kind of stuff,” I told her. Suddenly I clapped my hands really loudly. The bats woke up. A huge black cloud of them rose up from the pit like a monster from the deep and Cora screamed. Then Nora screamed. And then Wanda. It was a horrible sound. The screams echoed all around the cave and another load of bats dropped down from the roof and began to flap around so the air was thick with flapping bats.
“Arrgh!” yelled Wanda. “They are in my hat!”
“It’s all right, Wanda,” I hissed. “They’ll go in a minute. Just keep still.” I was really pleased. This was going exactly to plan. I had scared Nosy Nora and Creepy Cora—now all I had to do was to get the bats to stop flapping. So I began a bat hum. This is something Uncle Drac taught me not long ago. It is quite difficult to do because you have to make a very high noise, but I can do it really well. It worked with our bats at home and now was the time to test it on the bats on Skeleton Island.
“Eeemeeeoooooooo,” I began to hum. “Eeemeeeooooooooooo …” Sure enough, the bats stopped flapping, and just as if Miss Gargoyle had rung her bell for everyone to come back into class, they flew quietly back to their roosts and settled down. It was brilliant.
Nosy Nora and Creepy Cora just stood there looking cross. “That was not a nice thing to do, Araminta,” Nora said. “You really scared Cora.”
“You were scared too,” I told her. “You were screaming.”
“That was Cora,” Nosy Nora fibbed. “And Weedy Wanda.” And then she put her hand up to her neck and looked really upset. “My necklace!” she said. “The one my lovely old grannie gave me just before she died. It’s gone.” She eyeballed me. “It must have fallen off into that horrible pit.”
I shone my torch into the pit. “I can’t see it,” I said.
“It will have sunk into all that horrid bat poo by now,” Nora said. And then she stared at me. “I’ll do you a deal. If you go and get my necklace, I won’t tell Miss Gargoyle that you tried to suffocate us with a herd of bats.”
“That is very nice of you, Nora,” Creepy Cora said. “Because if you did tell Miss Gargoyle, Araminta would be expelled.”
“What’s expelled?” Wanda asked anxiously.
Nora was very keen to tell her. “It is horrible,” she said. “They throw you out of the school and leave you on the drive with all your suitcases in the rain, and they tell you that you can never, ever come back. Then they slam the front door and lock it and everyone laughs at you from the windows. And me and Cora will be laughing the most. So there. Ha ha ha!”
Wanda looked shocked. And then puzzled. “Does it have to be raining?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Cora.
I did not like the sound of being expelled one bit. I loved being at Gargoyle Hall and the thought of having to go back to Spook House and live with Aunt Tabby all the time was not nice. And the thought of what Aunt Tabby would say when she found out that we had been expelled was especially not nice. “Come on, Wanda,” I said. “Let’s go and get the stupid necklace.”
“Do I have to go?” Wanda asked.
“I need you to hold the torch while I look through the bat poo,” I told her. “Unless you want to look through the bat poo while I hold the torch?”
Wanda shook her head. “No, thank you, Araminta,” she said. “I will hold the torch.”
We took off our rucksacks, and then we took off our hats because I thought they might upset the bats, and we climbed down Uncle Drac’s ladder into the pit.
“Poo,” Wanda said, holding her nose.
I shone my torch on to the bat-poo floor. All I could see was black sludge. “I can’t see it anywhere!” I shouted up.
“You’ll have to dig in the poo!” Nora shouted down and I am sure I heard Cora giggle.
I scuffed at the poo with my foot—it smelled horrible—and suddenly I saw the ladder move. Nora was pulling it up! I jumped to grab it but Nora whisked it out of reach.
“Hey!” Wanda yelled. “Put the ladder back!”
Nora leaned over the edge of the pit and grinned at us. “No,” she said. “You see how you like being scared, Araminta Spook.” Then they both trilled out, “Bye-eee!” and we heard their footsteps going away, echoing up the gulley.
“Come back!” Wanda yelled.
“They’ll be back in a minute,” I said.
But they weren’t.
We waited and waited and waited, but no one came.
We yelled out, “Help! Help! Help!” at the top of our voices until our throats hurt, but no one came.
We walked around the pit looking for another way out but there wasn’t one. We could hear the faint swishing noise of the waves far below and I guessed that sometimes in a storm the water was forced up into the bat pit. But I knew that couldn’t have happened for ages, because it was nothing more than a deep hole full of bat poo.
Wanda sniffed. “This bat poo smells disgusting,” she said. “It is the kind of smell that makes you feel sick.”
I shone my torch on Wanda’s face. She screwed up her eyes and said, “Don’t do that, Araminta.” But she did look a little bit green. I didn’t like the idea of Wanda being sick, so I thought it best to distract her. I shone my torch up the walls, hoping that
I might see some bits of rock that we could use as steps to climb out, but the surface was black and furry and covered with bats. Any other time I would have thought how cute they looked but it is surprising how quickly you can go off bats when you are stuck sharing their smelly bat pit.
“What are we going to do, Araminta?” Wanda said in a quiet voice that scared me a little. I would have been much happier if Wanda had done her usual Wanda wail. I tried to think what a chief detective would do if two sneaky low-down criminals had trapped her in a bat pit. I couldn’t think of anything, but I wasn’t going to let Wanda know that.
“We will have to make a plan,” I said.
“What kind of plan, exactly?” Wanda asked, getting picky like she does when she is scared.
Suddenly it came to me. I suppose that is what happens to a chief detective when her sidekick gets picky. “We must make a plan to get the ladder,” I said. I flashed the torch beam on to the bottom rung of the ladder, which was poking over the edge of the bat pit. I jumped up and down to try to reach it, but every time I landed I squished deep into the bat poo. It was not nice. At all.
“It is obviously too far to reach, Araminta,” Wanda said in a cross voice.
“Well, you will have to climb on my shoulders then,” I said, trying to be what Uncle Drac calls positive.
I did not realise what big feet Wanda had until they were standing on my shoulders covered in bat poo. I didn’t realise how heavy she was either. But there was no way Wanda could reach the ladder and when she stood on tiptoe she wobbled so much that she very nearly fell into the bat poo. And when she climbed down she left bat poo from her shoes smeared all over my yellow Gargoyle Hall jacket.
So we shouted a bit more. “Help! Help! Help!” But still no one came.
“It’s like those dungeons they used to throw prisoners in and forget about,” Wanda said, dismally. “I think they’re called clarinets or something.”
“Shut up, Wanda,” I said. “And actually, they are called oubliettes, if you must know.”