Locked In

by Z. Fraillon

  He had a point.

  The look on Saffy’s face soured. ‘So, we don’t even get a choice? We’re just shoved in here and expected to hunt monsters even if we don’t want to?’

  Mac smiled. ‘Well, you could ask to be flown back to thug school. By the time the plane lands you’ll think this was just a dream. But don’t worry – this place kind of grows on you.’

  6

  Jasper was flying. He knew it was a dream because he was flying with a flock of turkey sandwiches, and turkey sandwiches don’t usually fly. Still, it was a nice dream and he was enjoying it.

  ‘GET UP YOU LAZY LITTLE SLOB!’ someone yelled in his ear.

  He didn’t think this was part of his turkey sandwich dream.

  Jasper forced an eye open and groaned. He was right. This wasn’t a dream. This was really happening. He was back in his bed. His cold, hard bed, in the cold, hard sleep hall. At Monstrum House.

  The numbers glared on the clock next to his bed. It was 11.45pm. How could it possibly still be the same day? Jasper had a feeling that this was going to be a horrible end to a horrible birthday.

  Three dark shapes with balaclavas masking their faces stood over Jasper’s bed. In the dim light, he could just make out their camouflage suits.

  ‘Great. The thug brigade,’ he muttered.

  One of the prefects grabbed Jasper by his legs, and another grabbed hold of his arms. Someone clamped a hand over his mouth.

  My head’s going to get flushed down the toilet, was all Jasper could think. He knew that some schools had stupid initiation ceremonies that the older kids forced on the new kids. Well, come on, thought Jasper, gritting his teeth. Let’s get it over with.

  Jasper was carried through the first-year boys’ sleep hall, down the huge marble staircase, past the line of statues, and out into the dark icy night. Snow pelted against his face. A black van was waiting outside the door.

  Jasper had seen enough scary movies to know that nothing good ever came out of being dragged out of bed and put into a van.

  And this was turning out to be just like the movies, in the worst possible way.

  Jasper was thrown into the back of the van and ordered not to make a sound.

  The van rumbled through the night. Jasper had no idea where they were or how far they were going. His sense of direction wasn’t working. The longer they drove, the more scary images shot through his brain.

  Jasper could hear the prefects sniggering to each other from the front of the van. He took a deep breath. There was no way for him to escape. Maybe they’ve organised a surprise birthday party, Jasper thought hopefully. But something told him that wasn’t quite what the prefects had in mind.

  After what felt like hours – well, maybe half an hour, but a really long half-hour – the van screeched to a stop. Jasper was flung forward in the cabin. Then the door was wrenched open and he was marched out into the cold night.

  He was standing in front of an old falling-down house. A really spooky old falling-down house. The windows were broken, cobwebs hung from the busted rafters and, from somewhere close by, a wolf howled.

  It didn’t help that there was a full moon and that clouds were drifting across it like something out of a ghost story. And it was freezing. Jasper wished he was wearing more than his pyjamas.

  ‘You didn’t happen to bring my jacket, did you?’ Jasper asked.

  One of the prefects responded by shoving him so hard he almost fell into the snow.

  ‘Gee, temper, temper,’ Jasper said before he could stop himself. This time, he did end up in the snow.

  A prefect nudged the door to the house open with his foot. The door gave a creepy creeeeak. Jasper was wrenched to his feet and pushed down the hallway towards a dark room.

  ‘THIS IS A TEST!’ the prefect shouted. Then he shoved Jasper inside the room, and slammed the door.

  The spoooooooky house

  Jasper stood in the dark. The room was silent. He heard the door lock with a soft click. An image of the Blibberwail popped into his head, and his bravery disappeared.

  He tried to think of all the daring things he had done before, like standing up to bullies twice his size, or the time he’d sneaked into school at night and rewired the computer system so the kids could get onto the Access Denied websites. Jasper got a buzz from taking risks.

  But bullies were one thing, and monsters were another. Monsters were seriously scary. Since dinner that night, Jasper had heard stories of two-headed monsters hiding under the beds in the sleep halls and monsters with sharp fangs chasing kids down the corridors. The fact that Jasper had seen the fanged, drooling, three-nosed Blibberwail didn’t help either. His ears were still ringing from its screech.

  No matter how hard he tried not to think about it, Jasper knew that if this was a test at a monster-hunting school, chances were there was a monster in this room. And it probably wasn’t in a cage.

  He guessed he was about to find out.

  7

  It was dark. Very dark.

  ‘Hello?’ Jasper called out. ‘Anyone there?’ There was no answer.

  Jasper stood still, waiting for his eyes to get used to the dark and for his heart to stop racing. He was locked in, with nowhere to go.

  ‘This is really not very nice,’ Jasper called out to the prefects. But there was no response.

  Then Jasper heard it again. The same eerie, faint whispering he’d heard when he got off the plane earlier that day. The words were strange and didn’t quite make sense, but Jasper felt that he could almost make them out. ‘Slaan wryn kommmt ... Jaaaaasp ...’

  A dim light shone under the gap in the door. The whispering stopped.

  Jasper could make out the shape of a bed in the darkest corner of the room.

  It’s a test. Jasper reminded himself. Just a test.

  A monster-hunting test. And what better place to find a monster than under a bed?

  Jasper thought he saw something move – a flicker of the darkest black in the very back corner beneath the bed.

  He heard a soft scratching noise. Jasper’s heart beat even more quickly. He looked around the room again. There was nothing he could use to help him catch the monster, like a big cage with a flashing button that said PUSH TO CATCH MONSTER.

  The scratching became louder, and then there was complete silence. The silence was worse than the scratching.

  Jasper clenched his teeth and took a deep breath. He mentally listed everything in the room he could use. Bed ... er, blanket? Pillow? A rough plan began forming in his brain. It’s worth a go, he thought.

  He sprinted towards the bed. With a flying leap, he landed squarely in the middle of the mattress. He threw the covers over the top of himself, and lay in the dark, waiting for the monster to attack.

  He tried to remember what Von Strasser had said about the monsters that hide under beds. It was something about them waiting for you to fall into the deep sleep that makes you defenceless.

  And then what? Jasper wondered.

  He closed his eyes and lay very still. After a little while, he let out a soft snore. He waited a few more minutes, then slowly let his arm slip through the covers and dangle down from the bed. He hoped the monster wasn’t smart enough to know he was faking sleep.

  He waited. And then he could feel it waiting. Suddenly, he felt very cold.

  That did it. Instead of being afraid, a sudden surge of courage pumped through Jasper’s body. This was a fight he was not going to lose.

  There was a soft slither as the monster crept out from under the bed. Through the covers, Jasper caught his first glimpse of the monster. The sight of it made him take in a sharp breath. His lungs were bursting with a giant scream. It took every bit of his self-control to keep quiet.

  The monster was covered in shiny black fur. It had red-tipped spikes forming a crest down its back and a scaly tail that ended in a heavy-looking club. Being thumped by that would really do some damage. But its eyes – its eyes were the worst. They glowed like lamps in the dark
, casting a sickly green light over Jasper.

  There was complete silence – then Jasper felt the cold, sharp nails of the monster clawing at his arm.

  Jasper felt himself begin to panic. He didn’t know what to do. I am a total goner, he thought.

  And then an image of his family popped into his head. His mum, his sisters, his two dogs. He had to get out of this place. Some part of his brain clicked back into action. He got ready.

  Just as the monster was about to drag him from the bed, Jasper jumped. He sprang from the bed, with the monster’s claws latched firmly onto his arm. In surprise, the monster let go.

  Snobleshriek

  Jasper narrowly dodged being thumped by the monster’s armoured tail as it tried to scramble back under the bed. Then he pounced. He swung the monster by its tail, and landed it with a thump in the middle of the bed.

  ‘GOTCHA!’ he yelled.

  Before the monster had a chance to escape, Jasper had bundled it into the bed covers and tied the corners of the sheets together. The monster jumped about inside the bundle, pricking Jasper with the spikes down its spine, but it was no use. It was trapped.

  Jasper couldn’t believe it. He had caught a monster! A real monster! He had done lots of cool stuff in his life, lots of brave stuff, but he’d never done anything like this.

  Jasper looked at the squirming bundle, and felt a fantastic rush. It was that awesome buzz that came with being so close to danger.

  Then Jasper remembered what Mac had said about loving Hunts, and he thought he had an inkling of just what Mac had meant.

  8

  The lights came on and the door clicked open. Stenka marched into the room. She glanced around and inspected the makeshift sack.

  ‘Good,’ she said coldly, and wrote something on a clipboard.

  Jasper was stunned. Good? Good? He had been better than good – he had been fantastic! ‘That’s it?’ he protested.

  Stenka stared coldly at Jasper. ‘What would you like? A marching band?’

  Actually, Jasper thought a marching band would have been pretty cool – maybe a bit over the top – but cool all the same. I just caught a monster with my bare hands, Jasper thought.

  ‘You didn’t catch a monster,’ Stenka said. ‘You caught a trained Snobleshriek, and they are two very different things. If that was a wild monster, it would have driven you mad with fear by now. Snobleshrieks are skilled at playing with the minds of children. Especially cocky children.’ She paused. ‘They like to see them crumble.’

  Jasper gulped.

  ‘Class 1B,’ Stenka stated, handing Jasper a form. ‘I will be your class teacher.’

  Jasper resisted the urge to groan.

  Stenka looked at him coldly. ‘Any trouble, and you’ll find out just how generous I can be with penalty points. Class starts at 6.30am sharp. Don’t be late.’

  Jasper looked at his watch. It was 2am.

  Stenka strode down the hallway back to the front door. ‘Quickly. Back to the sleep hall,’ she said icily. ‘But you had better make sure nobody catches you. After all, being out of bed at night is against the rules.’

  Stenka led Jasper to the door of the spooky house. She smiled at the sight of the snow falling thick and fast.

  ‘Um, where’s the van?’ Jasper asked through chattering teeth.

  ‘What van?’ she said, her sinister smile growing bigger every time Jasper shivered.

  I should have known, he thought. He was freezing and, on top of that, he now had to find his way back through the snow, barefoot.

  Jasper clenched his teeth together to stop them from chattering. ‘Well, then,’ he said to Stenka, forcing himself to smile. ‘I guess I’d better run.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stenka, then slammed the door in his face.

  Jasper peered through the dark. He thought he could see the outline of the school in the distance – a dark looming tower in the night. But in between Jasper and the school was a dark forest. A very dark, very cold, very scary-looking forest.

  A wolf howled again.

  Jasper figured he had a few options. Unfortunately, escape from this torture chamber they called a school wasn’t one of them. At least, not in this weather, with only his pyjamas on.

  Option one: he could wait until morning. But where would he wait? He’d freeze to death by then, even if he built a snow cave. And there was the slight problem that he didn’t actually know how to build a snow cave. And of course there were the wolves and monsters to consider.

  Option two: he could try to sneak back into the old house somehow. Picking the locks would be a cinch, but he didn’t particularly want to bump into Stenka again. Or the Snobleshriek. Or anything else that might live inside.

  Option three: he could try and make it back to the school. It didn’t look that far away. The van must have driven around in circles for a while, trying to freak him out along the way.

  Jasper looked around. He was sure he could see things moving in the dark around him. Small, red eyes seemed to peer out from the bushes. That decided it.

  He ran towards the school as quickly as he could. Jasper was a fast runner, but he’d never run quite this fast before.

  He stepped on something sharp as he tripped and stumbled his way through the forest. His feet felt as though they had been shredded. He wondered if he should wrap his pyjamas around them for protection – but he wasn’t desperate enough to run through the forest naked. Not yet, anyway.

  He was almost there. The forest had thinned out. Now all that lay between him and the old stone mansion was a snow-covered field and the school fence. Searchlights scanned back and forth over the snow.

  If I can make it through that field without being caught, this will be my lucky day, thought Jasper.

  He leant against a tree and tried hard not to think about monsters. Of course, that just made him think about monsters even more.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He was sure he could hear the sound of very soft breathing, very close by. Someone, or something, was out there, watching him. And he bet this time it wouldn’t be a trained something.

  Von Strasser’s voice echoed in his head. You feel them just before they attack. An ice-cold chill runs down your spine when they are close.

  ‘Ice-cold chill’ didn’t even begin to describe the spider-like tingle of dread that was crawling up Jasper’s spine.

  He heard the snow crunch behind him.

  He turned around and just caught a glimpse of a dark shape rushing towards him.

  Then everything went black.

  9

  Jasper opened his eyes slowly. The whole world was spinning. It took him a few moments to work out exactly where he was: lying on his back, in the snow, in the middle of the night. At a school for monster-hunters. He wondered if he could just go back to being unconscious.

  Jasper clenched his eyes shut again, and breathed deeply. Perhaps if he wished really hard, he would find himself back home in his own bed. Kind of like The Wizard of Oz.

  ‘There’s no place like home,’ Jasper moaned, knocking the heels of his feet together three times. But Jasper knew he wasn’t in a movie. This was real. Slowly, he peeled his eyes open.

  He tried not to think about monsters eating him alive. Especially as he had just been attacked by something.

  Something that was probably coming back.

  He blinked, and his eyes began to focus. A tree, the moon, lots of foresty sticks and leaves and … wait. Something was standing over him. Jasper opened his mouth to scream.

  The figure shoved a hand roughly over Jasper’s mouth. Jasper bit down hard on the hand and hit out at the figure.

  ‘Ouch!’ the attacker cried as Jasper swung it onto the ground and pounced on top of it.

  Jasper stopped. As far as he knew, monsters didn’t usually say ouch. And since when did they have hands?

  Jasper had the figure by the hair, his fist raised for another punch. He paused long enough to look at the figure. Head. Hair. Legs. Arms. Body. Pyj
amas. Nope, definitely not a monster.

  ‘Er, sorry,’ Jasper said to the boy in front of him, who was dripping blood into the snow from a very sore-looking nose. ‘I thought you were a … you know, monster or something. I just got knocked out by something, and it will probably come back for us.’

  The boy looked sheepishly at Jasper and wiped his nose on his sleeve. ‘Um, I wouldn’t worry about that. It was kind of, well, me,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I thought you were a monster too.’

  Jasper’s mouth dropped open in surprise. ‘You knocked me out?’

  The boy shrugged. He was smaller and skinnier than Jasper, and didn’t look like he could knock anybody out.

  Jasper didn’t know whether to be mad or not. His head still hurt but, then again, the boy’s nose looked kind of painful.

  ‘Where did you learn to do that?’ Jasper asked, helping the boy to his feet.

  ‘My dad taught me,’ he replied. ‘I’m a black belt at karate.’

  Jasper was impressed. He knew how to fight with his fists, but karate – now that was cool.

  ‘I’m Felix,’ the boy said as he packed cold snow on his swelling nose.

  ‘Jasper.’

  They grinned and nodded at each other. ‘So, did you just have a test too?’ Jasper asked.

  Felix nodded. ‘Yep. In a room with a Flippelsqueal in the wardrobe. It was horrible,’ he added with a shiver. ‘How did you go?’ he asked Jasper.

  ‘Yeah, er … no worries,’ replied Jasper. He didn’t mention how much he’d wanted to scream when he saw the Snobleshriek.

  The Monstrum House School for

  Troubled Children ... at 2.45am

  ‘Scary, huh? I was petrified,’ Felix replied.

  Jasper raised his eyebrows. ‘You? You could have knocked it out with your karate moves.’

  Felix looked embarrassed. ‘I only learnt karate for self-defence because my brothers were always thumping me. But I don’t think a kick would work against a Flippealsqueal. The worst thing is, I knew what was coming. I spent all day freaking out about it. My brothers had told me what would happen.’