Winchflat made his little sister a Stick-And-Red-Rubber-Ball-Throwing Machine, which she kept in a very long narrow dungeon. No one else would admit it, but every single one of her brothers and sisters and her parents had played with the machine when they thought no one else was looking.12 It was one of those family secrets that everyone else knew about but all pretended they didn’t. I suppose it proves that it’s true when people say, ‘There is a bit of dog in all of us.’13
Nerlin and Mordonna shared a cellar, but you’re not old enough to know what it’s for. Orange jelly, chains, socks, mugs of hot chocolate and a big armchair were involved (though not necessarily in that order), but even their hobby was spoilt by the Dents’ noise.
Sunday afternoon, 3.42 pm – family meeting
‘Something has to be done,’ said Nerlin. ‘Something permanent.’
‘Yeah,’ said Satanella. She liked the sound of ‘permanent’. It made her think there might be a lot of blood involved.
‘You can see why their name is Dent,’ said Valla. ‘They are a dent on the face of humanity.’
‘Yeah,’ everyone agreed.
‘And what do you do to dents?’ Betty asked.
‘You fill them in,’ said Winchflat.
‘But not before you’ve bashed them as flat as you can first,’ said Morbid. Silent nodded.
‘Grrrr,’ said Satanella, thinking how nice it would be to chew on a Dent leg bone.
‘Couldn’t we just put a “be nice” spell on them?’ said Mordonna.
‘That’s boring,’ said Betty. ‘Anyway, they’re ugly and stupid and we want them out of our street.’
‘Actually, we want them out of our town,’ said Winchflat.
‘Galaxy,’ said Valla.
‘I think you should go and talk to them, before we do anything,’ said Mordonna.
‘Okay, my darling, but it won’t do any good,’ said Nerlin. ‘You can’t reason with people like that.’
‘I’ll come with you, Dad,’ offered Merlinmary. ‘If there’s any trouble, I can give them an electric shock.’
The Dents had turned their front yard into a pigsty, except no decent pig would ever have wanted to live there. There were three rusty old cars – one where Rambo the dog lived, another where Tracylene locked up her boyfriends to stop them running away, and another where Mr Dent fell asleep when he was too drunk to find his own front door. In between the cars, the grass grew a metre high, burying all the rubbish that never quite made it to the dustbin.
As Nerlin and Merlinmary walked through the hole in the wall that had once been a gate, Rambo lifted his head over his windscreen and growled. He had a thick spiked collar around his neck and a heavy chain padlocked to the steering wheel. His eyes flashed like burning coals but it was hard to be sure he was looking at you because he was seriously crosseyed. His sight was so wonky that he’d bitten his own leg quite a few times when he thought he was attacking the postman.
‘What do you lot want?’ said Mr Dent as Nerlin and Merlinmary stood on his front step. ‘Get lost, freaks.’
‘There’s no need to be like that,’ said Nerlin. ‘We’d just like to have a talk.’
‘I said get lost, you weirdoes, or I’ll set Rambo on you.’
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ Nerlin warned him.
‘Oh yeah, oh yeah,’ said Mr Dent. ‘Why not?’
‘I just wouldn’t,’ said Nerlin.
Mr Dent unclipped Rambo’s lead. The crazy dog was so desperate to get at Nerlin that he knocked Mr Dent flying, covering him in drool and dog breath, but before he could reach Nerlin, Merlinmary clicked her fingers and the giant rottweiler turned into a tiny poodle. As Mr Dent struggled to get up, Rambo the poodle shot up the inside of his trouser leg and bit him on a part of his body that should never see daylight.
‘You freaks …’ Mr Dent began, but the pain was so excruciating he couldn’t finish his sentence. Rambo took another bite, shot down his other trouser and raced inside the house. Mr Dent, his eyes streaming with tears of pain, staggered to his feet and walked straight into the back bumper of Rambo’s car. His pain then became serious agony as he fell over again, this time cutting his hand on a broken bottle.
‘You, you, you,’ he spluttered and crawled indoors, where Rambo was waiting to pay him back some more for all the kicks and swearing Mr Dent had given him over the years. As Rambo raced through every room in the Dents’ house getting his revenge, it became clear why the first half of the word ‘poodle’ is ‘poo’.
Small dogs can run a lot faster than big clumsy dogs or people. So the big clumsy Dents never managed to catch Rambo, no matter how hard they tried. They set traps baited with food, but Rambo was about three times more intelligent than they were – actually, so was the average pigeon – so they were useless.
‘Nice one, sweetheart,’ Nerlin said to his daughter as they left. ‘First round to us, I think.’
The next day, when the Dent children were at school and Mrs Dent was in her usual place in front of the TV watching Dr Clint’s Trailer Trash Special and Mr Dent was still asleep in bed, Rambo the poodle went to sleep in Dickie’s bed. Rambo fell asleep and dreamt of the days when he’d been a puppy with all his brothers and sisters. Life had been good then, those first three months. Then he had gone to live with the Dents and it had all been downhill after that. After all those years of being chained up in a wrecked car, it was so warm and cosy in Dickie’s bed – much too comfortable to get out of bed and go outside when he needed to go to the toilet.
So it doesn’t take much imagination to guess what Dickie Dent stuck his bare feet in when he got into bed that night. He didn’t realise what it was straightaway. He wriggled his feet around so it went between his toes, and then the smell drifted out of the covers and hit him. At first he thought it was his mother’s cooking – it wouldn’t have been the first time his sister had played that trick on him – but then he realised.
‘Mummmm,’ he cried, but Mrs Dent had just switched channels to watch Big Brother Special Shock Edition, where some brain cells had been discovered in one of the contestants, and the viewers had to guess who they belonged to.
‘It’s them Floods’ fault,’ Dickie muttered. ‘If they hadn’t done that to Rambo …’
Dickie had always been scared out of his wits by Rambo when the dog had been a rottweiler. When he had been a baby, his dad had held him up inches away from the ferocious dog’s drooling fangs, but Rambo had still been their dog and turning him into a girlie-pink poodle and making him wet Dickie’s bed made him want revenge. He decided he would wait until the Floods went out, and then go into their house and get his own back.
But as well as being a mean and nasty little boy, Dickie Dent was also very, very stupid. He was too stupid to realise that the last place on Earth you should break into was a house that belonged to a family of witches and wizards. So he waited until he saw the family leave the house for their evening walk in the local graveyard, then he kicked a hole in the fence and crawled through it and squeezed under the hedge into the Floods’ back yard. The back door was unlocked so he slipped inside.
Part of Dickie’s being very, very stupid was the fact that he couldn’t count. When he had seen the Floods go out he hadn’t made sure all nine of them were there. What made him very, very, very stupid was that the Flood who wasn’t there was the one he actually went to school with.
The house felt creepy. The air was cold and damp, even though outside it was a warm summer’s day. There weren’t any chip wrappers or half-eaten burgers with mould on them like in his own kitchen. The whole place smelled horrible.
It smelled clean.
Right, Dickie thought, time for revenge.
He walked over to the kitchen drawers, pulled the bottom one open and dropped his trousers.
But he was not alone. As he began to concentrate and grit his teeth, Betty tiptoed downstairs. Dickie closed his eyes tight and began to strain. Betty had been up in her room doing her homework and had heard D
ickie kicking the fence. Now, just as he was about to poo in the kitchen drawer, she made his feet give way beneath him. As Dickie fell, he grabbed hold of the nearest thing – his trousers – and pulled them up. At the last moment he realised what had happened, but he had gone too far to stop and sat down with a terrible squelch.
‘Hello, Dickie,’ said Betty. ‘Looks like the icky bubba has pooed his pants.’
The lid flew off a jar of frogs’ eyes in fish oil on the draining board and it tipped itself over Dickie’s head.
‘You are a clumsy little boy, aren’t you?’ laughed Betty as the breakfast creatures that had been hiding under the stove slithered up the boy’s legs.
‘I’m, I’m, I’m not scared of you,’ he cried.
‘Well, you should be.’
‘You’re just a stupid witch,’ Dickie snivelled.
‘Witch, yes,’ said Betty. ‘Stupid, no.’
The frogs’ eyes slithered down his face onto his T-shirt and looked up at him. Dickie tried to get up, but the floor was wet with fish oil and he kept slipping.
‘You wait till I tell my dad,’ he cried.
‘Surely you don’t imagine you’re ever going to see your dad again, do you?’ laughed Betty.
She was really enjoying herself now. A tiny bit of her brain felt a tiny little bit guilty, but she was a witch and Dickie was vile, so most of her brain said to itself: Is this great or what?
‘Remember when your hair caught fire in class?’ she said.
‘That was just an accident,’ said Dickie, but he knew it hadn’t been. He knew Betty had made it happen.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Betty.
Dickie’s hair began to smoke and he tried to crawl towards the door, but he fell flat on his face. Betty stood over him with a sweet innocent smile on her face.
‘Are you scared now?’ she said.
‘N-n-n-n-no,’ Dickie lied.
The frogs’ eyes slid up onto his face again and stared into his eyes. He began to whimper.
‘You should be,’ said Betty.
Dickie tried to crawl towards the door. Betty clicked her fingers and the slimy stuff Dickie was lying in began to get hotter and hotter. Two of the frogs’ eyes slid up his nose and then two more. He couldn’t pretend any longer. He was terrified and began to cry.
‘You can say sorry now,’ said Betty.
‘Sorry,’ he whimpered.
‘I can’t hear you,’ said Betty.
‘Sorry.’
‘Louder.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ Dickie cried out. Now the tears were pouring down his face and he wet himself.
‘You are a nasty evil little boy, aren’t you?’ said Betty.
‘Yes. I’m sorry,’ Dickie whimpered.
‘Breaking into people’s houses and doing nasty things and being vile to everyone.’
‘Yes.’
‘And pulling people’s hair and setting fire to things and scratching people’s cars.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re a horrible worthless piece of pig poo, aren’t you?’ said Betty.
‘Yes … sorry,’ cried Dickie.
‘And you’re a nasty fat little liar too, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s the main problem, really,’ said Betty, ‘You keep saying sorry, but you’re probably lying.’
‘No, I’m not, really,’ pleaded Dickie.
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
The fish oil stopped getting hot and Dickie grabbed hold of a chair and pulled himself up.
‘Can I go now?’ he said.
‘Promise you won’t be evil any more?’ said Betty.
‘Yes,’ said Dickie with his fingers crossed behind his back.
But he was still just as stupid as before and when he turned towards the door, he still had them crossed, so Betty could see them. It didn’t matter, because there was no way Betty was letting him go.
‘Stop,’ she snapped and Dickie’s feet stuck to the floor. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘What?’
‘Be afridge,’ said Betty. ‘Be very afridge.’
Dickie laughed that nasty little snigger that mean, evil little boys all over the world do so well.
‘Don’t you mean “be afraid”, stupid?’ he sneered.
‘I know what I mean,’ said Betty. She had actually meant to say, ‘Be afraid,’ but as often happens when people get excited, she got her words a bit muddled up. Though there was no way she was going to let Dickie know that.
Very slowly Dickie felt himself getting squarer. It didn’t hurt at all. Betty was a witch, but she could also be quite kind and gentle. It was something she hoped to grow out of as she got older.
Dickie stood up but he couldn’t run away because his legs had sort of vanished. He still had feet – in fact he now had four of them and they were self-levelling hydraulic feet. As he looked down for what would be the last time, he thought that he actually looked nicer made of stainless steel than he had made of skin and fat. He had a gorgeous ice-cube maker in his left-hand door and a plasma TV in the right.
So, of course, Dickie died – which he definitely deserved to do, to save the world from himself – but he died happy and very shiny. His last thought was: Wow, I am, like, the handsomest, most expensive fridge in the shop. If only Mum could see me now.
The last thing he said was: ‘Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmmmmm mmmmmmmmmm.’ Which he hummed in a very soft, expensive sort of way several times a day.
‘All that magic has made me really hungry,’ Betty said to herself. ‘I wonder what sort of stuff you get inside a fridge you’ve just turned someone into.’
She’d decided that Dickie would probably be empty and have to charge up overnight to get cold, until she remembered that Dickie was a magic fridge. And when Betty peered inside, he was lovely and cold and full of her favourite food. In the freezer, there were seventeen kinds of ice-cream. In the fridge, there was a huge plate of cold roast lamb with a two-litre jug of mint sauce. There were barbecued chicken wings, a sticky date pudding and a very large box of chocolates with no hard toffees at all.
Betty took out a tub of delicious strawberry ice-cream.
‘Excellent,’ she said, as Vlad licked the last of the fish oil off the floor.
No one in Dickie’s family noticed he was missing at first. Mr and Mrs Dent didn’t like their children very much, and the less they saw of them the more they liked it. Once, Tracylene had been in prison for a month for shoplifting, and her parents hadn’t even noticed she’d gone.
When Mrs Dent stuck Dickie’s burger, chips and beans down on the table for his tea and realised she’d just put it on top of another plate of burger, chips and beans, she wondered why her son hadn’t eaten his tea the night before. She shouted upstairs for him but by the time she realised he hadn’t answered, her favourite programme was on the TV, so she didn’t bother. The opening music was playing and it drew her like a magnet towards the screen.14
There were five plates of burger, chips and beans piled on top of each other before she thought that maybe Dickie was not at home.
‘I wonder where he’s got to?’ she said as she sat down to watch TV again.
‘Who?’ said Mr Dent. ‘Tracylene, get me another beer.’ The beer fridge was in the hall, to be nearer to Mr Dent’s TV chair, but even then, it was too much of an effort for him to fetch his own drinks.
‘Get it yourself,’ Tracylene shouted from her bedroom. She loved her dad in the same way people love walking in dog poo. ‘I’m off out, Mum.’
‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ Mrs Dent told her.
‘You wish.’
Tracylene was wearing her favourite outfit, although the endless diet of burgers, chips and beans made it harder to fit into than she remembered.
‘Must have shrunk in the wash,’ she said to herself as she checked her reflection in the mirror. ‘Still looking good, though.’
This was a str
ange definition of ‘looking good’. Large amounts of Tracylene bulged out above and below her bright pink mini-skirt and a large amount of her chest simply refused to stay where it was meant to. The fact that her spindly high-heeled shoes didn’t collapse under her weight was proof that Chinese engineers were very clever people.
‘Rubbish underwear,’ she muttered, topping up her layers of eye-shadow and lipstick.
‘Rubbish knickers! Rubbish knickers!’ squawked Adolf the budgie, the Dent’s other pet. Adolf lived in Tracylene’s bedroom and she had taught him to talk. Whenever Tracylene posed in front of her mirror, which she did dozens of times a day, Adolf would whistle at her and say, ‘More lipstick, baby!’ and ‘Nice legs!’ When he was alone, though, Adolf used to look in his mirror and say to his reflection, ‘It’s a rotten job, but someone’s got to do it.’
Tracylene tottered out of the front door and went off to meet her friends Shareelene and Torylene and a group of spotty boys who worshipped them.
After a few more days had gone by and the pile of cold burger, chips and beans had grown to eight plates high, Mrs Dent had an idea. Tomorrow she would put the ninth plate next to the old pile instead of on top of it, just in case the pile fell over. That was the most complicated thought she’d had that month.
‘He hasn’t been at school all week,’ she said the next night when Mr Dent got back from explaining to the dole office how his bad back had actually got a lot worse. ‘Do you think we should call the police?’
‘Who? Why?’ asked Mr Dent. ‘Tracylene, get me another beer.’
‘Get it yourself,’ said Tracylene, who loved her dad in the same way people love being sick. ‘I’m off out, Mum.’
‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ said Mrs Dent.
‘You wish.’
Tracylene tried to imagine something her mum wouldn’t do, but she couldn’t.
Mrs Dent rang the police.
At first the police didn’t want to go to the Dents’ house.
Neighbours Page 3