The Extremely Weird Thing that Happened in Huggabie Falls

by Adam Cece

  ‘Game over,’ Tobias said cheerfully, wringing horse-trough water out of his shirt.

  ‘Well played.’ Kipp congratulated his friend. ‘What an amazing plan those poison sprayers were. How you knew that chemical would put the bats to sleep, I’ll never know.’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it one day,’ Tobias said.

  ‘It was pretty brave what you did.’

  ‘Brave?’ Tobias frowned. He was never brave. He didn’t know what had come over him.

  ‘But what about you?’ Tobias said. ‘Cymphany and I were facing certain death until you risked your life to steal Mrs Turgan’s broomstick.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ Kipp said modestly.

  ‘Hurrrrrrrrrrg,’ said Cymphany, which meant, in hippopotamus, if you two are quite finished patting each other on the back, don’t forget I’m still a baby hippopotamus, and now to top it all off this pig is looking at me like he wants a date.

  Tobias looked around. ‘Quick we’d better get out of here before Mrs Turgan—’

  ‘Too late!’ Mrs Turgan’s voice echoed through the shed, alarming the children and the farm animals. She was standing in the two-children-one-baby-hippo-and-a-broomstick-shaped hole left in the side of the shed, and the broomstick was standing proudly beside her.

  ‘Never send a bunch of dumb bats to do a witch’s job,’ Mrs Turgan hissed. ‘I’ll finish you children off myself, and, let me tell you, it will take a lot more than a splash of Spiritus Magnasomnigus to stop me.’

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany sighed as one, as if to say, when is this crazy teacher going to give us a break?

  Mrs Turgan began to fire off purple lightning bolts, which hit the shed’s wooden walls, sending splinters hurtling through the air and farm animals diving for cover. The children and the baby hippopotamus ducked and crawled out of the shed through a back hatch, which, coincidentally, was exactly the right size and shape for a baby hippopotamus to fit through. They ran across the oval and back into the school.

  Mrs Turgan took to the air on her broomstick, and soon her cackling laugh filled the air. ‘I’m going to get you, you revolting kiddies.’

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany ran around a corner and skidded to a stop. They found themselves staring at a high, solid brick wall.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Kipp. ‘A dead end. Quick, let’s go back.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Mrs Turgan, who had landed behind them, blocking their way back.

  ‘Gorbogh,’ Cymphany shouted, which in hippopotamus language meant, oh no, we’re in big trouble.

  ‘Oh no, we’re in big trouble,’ said Tobias, not realising that he’d repeated exactly what Cymphany had just said.

  ‘Yes, you are!’ said Mrs Turgan as she dismounted, and her mouth spread wide in an evil sneer. ‘You are in very serious trouble, indeed, in fact I doubt you could be in any more trouble than you are right now. You’ve escaped me twice already, but, let me assure you, you will not escape a third time.’

  ‘Mrs Turgan,’ Tobias said urgently. ‘We’ve been trying to investigate the extremely weird thing that happened.’ He corrected himself. ‘That is still happening. It’s affecting almost everyone, and we need to stop it.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Mrs Turgan said, and her long warty nose twitched. ‘You children skipped school, and the punishment for that is one zap of my wand for each of you.’

  ‘What will that do?’ Kipp asked.

  ‘Hugliff,’ Cymphany said, which meant, maybe it’s best if we don’t ask.

  ‘Maybe it’s best if we don’t ask,’ said Tobias.

  ‘Gurg?’ said Cymphany, which meant, I just said that.

  Mrs Turgan grinned. ‘It varies. Last week I zapped a boy I didn’t like the look of and he became the size of a mouse. Unfortunately, soon after he accidentally found his way into one of my mouse traps, silly little thing.’

  ‘You mean you kil…you kil…’ Tobias was too petrified to speak properly.

  ‘He was lucky,’ Mrs Turgan said. ‘There are far worse things that my wand can do, painful horrible things.’

  ‘Turg,’ said Cymphany, which probably meant, like what has happened to me.

  ‘Yeah, like what has happened to Cymphany,’ said Kipp.

  ‘Gurg,’ said Cymphany.

  ‘Enough talking,’ said Mrs Turgan. ‘The sooner I punish you, the sooner I can find some more disobedient children to punish.’

  She held up her wand. ‘Any last words?’

  ‘Sorry guys,’ said Kipp. ‘I never should have suggested we skip school today. I got us into this mess.’

  ‘Hurg huuuurrrag,’ said Cymphany, which probably meant, don’t be silly, Kipp—we all wanted to find out what was causing this extremely weird thing. You are a great friend who would never intentionally put us in harm’s way.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Kipp,’ said Tobias. ‘We all wanted to find out what was causing this extremely weird thing. You are a great friend who would never intentionally put us in harm’s way.’

  ‘Huppparg,’ screamed Cymphany, which meant, I’m really getting sick of everyone repeating what I say. When are you two going to learn to speak hippopotamus? You’d better learn quick, because we are probably only going to live for another two seconds.

  ‘Say goodbye, kiddies,’ said Mrs Turgan, as her wand hummed and sparked, and her broomstick clapped its bristles together.

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany huddled together, hugging each other, and awaited their doom.

  Mrs Turgan swished her wand.

  It chugged and spluttered.

  A frown spread across Mrs Turgan’s face. She slapped the wand against the side of her robes, muttering, ‘Silly thing. I just had it serviced last week.’

  She tried again to zap the children, but nothing happened.

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany couldn’t do anything but huddle together and hope that nothing continued to happen.

  After a few more tries, Mrs Turgan snapped her wand in half. ‘Stupid twig,’ she screeched. ‘I never should have bought a second-hand wand in the first place.’ She reached down and ripped a handful of blades of grass from a conveniently positioned tuft. ‘You managed to deal with my bats, but let’s see how you handle an army of deadly snakes,’ she hissed at the huddling children and baby hippo.

  She threw the blades of grass to the ground at the children’s feet, and Tobias, Kipp and Cymphany leapt back in fear.

  I’m guessing that the children and one baby hippopotamus didn’t leap back in fear because they have a phobia of blades of grass, like a friend of mine, Atticus, has. Last I heard, Atticus had moved to Antarctica—one of the most blades-of-grass-free regions in the whole world. Unlike Atticus, I’m guessing Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany weren’t scared of the actual blades of grass, but rather what the blades of grass might turn into, via Mrs Turgan’s magic.

  But the blades of grass stayed blades of grass, and they soon fluttered away in a light breeze.

  Mrs Turgan looked at her hands as if they were a non-magical person’s hands that had snuck onto her wrists when she wasn’t looking. ‘My powers,’ she wept. ‘They’re gone.’

  Then suddenly, in a flash of light, Cymphany stopped being a baby hippopotamus and turned back into a human girl.

  ‘Hurgug,’ she said. ‘Oh, whoops, sorry, I’m still talking in hippopotamus. I meant to say, hooray, I’m not a baby hippopotamus anymore.’

  Mrs Turgan gawked at Cymphany. And then her lip trembled, and she began to cry so much that she had to sit down.

  It’s weird how when you see someone crying, even someone who has been particularly horrible to you, you instantly feel sorry for them. The children looked at each other and then felt compelled to pat Mrs Turgan on the back.

  ‘There, there,’ said Cymphany, giving Mrs Turgan some tissues from her satchel. ‘Don’t cry, Mrs Turgan. Tobias, Kipp and I are going to find out what’s causing all this normality and put a stop to it. You’ll be back to your kid-zapping ways in no time.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said T
obias. ‘It’s nothing to worry about, just a temporary break in transmission.’

  ‘Nothing to worry about?’ Mrs Turgan sobbed, before blowing a big snotty mess into Cymphany’s tissues. ‘My powers are gone. How am I going to punish naughty children now?’

  ‘Perhaps you could just start being nice to people,’ Cymphany suggested.

  ‘Nice?’ Mrs Turgan blubbered.

  ‘Yes, nice,’ said Cymphany, as if to say, surely you must know what the word nice means.

  And then Mrs Turgan began to cry even harder than before. ‘Nice? I don’t do nice!’

  After a little while Mrs Turgan stopped crying, but then she realised that the only thing her broomstick was good for now was sweeping floors.

  ‘I can’t fly anymore,’ she wailed. ‘I’ll have to catch public transport. That’s a fate worse than death.’

  ‘Honestly,’ Kipp sighed. ‘Can’t you just walk until we get this weirdness sorted out.’

  ‘Walk?’ Mrs Turgan frowned.

  ‘Yes, walk.’

  So, after another bout of crying, Mrs Turgan did just that. She trudged off slowly, dragging her now-ordinary broomstick behind her.

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany stood and watched her go. It must have been a strange feeling for them to see a woman who used to be petrifying now not very petrifying at all.

  I know how the children felt—exactly the same thing happened to me, with my fear of keyboards. This was an affliction that greatly hampered my career as a writer. But after years of hypnotherapy, I am no longer petrified of keyboards, and I’m now able to use one, albeit only while blindfolded.

  Half an hour later the children found themselves on the corner of Digmont Drive and Digmont Drive.

  ‘Well, we didn’t learn too much today, did we,’ Cymphany said in a strangely upbeat voice, despite the day’s traumatic events. ‘We’ll have to meet up tomorrow and continue our investigations. But not too early. I like to sleep in on Saturdays.’

  Cymphany waved goodbye to Kipp and Tobias as she walked up the street to her house.

  When she was almost there, she turned and shouted, ‘Oh, and by the way, in case you wanted to know, the capital of Argentina is Buenos Aires.’ She grinned. ‘Just thought you’d like to know.’

  As Tobias and Kipp walked along Digmont Drive, Tobias said, ‘What is it with Cymphany and capital cities lately?’

  Kipp shrugged. ‘I was thinking the same thing myself. She’s acting weird, which is weird because she used to be the only normal person in this town.’

  They walked for a bit without saying anything, until Tobias said, ‘Why are you so upset about your family turning normal?’ Isn’t it—’

  ‘What I always wanted?’ Kipp looked thoughtful. ‘Yeah, I guess. But it doesn’t feel right. Something bad is happening to Huggabie Falls and we have to stop it.’

  ‘Although,’ Tobias said, ‘Mrs Turgan turning normal today did save our lives and stop Cymphany from spending the rest of her life as a baby hippopotamus.’

  ‘That’s true. Imagine being a baby hippopotamus forever,’ said Kipp.

  They continued along Digmont Drive, turned up Digmont Drive, then crossed over Digmont Drive to Kipp’s house.

  Kipp, Tobias and Cymphany weren’t able to meet each other the next day. Kipp’s parents had organised a family barbecue at the park, which was a very normal way for a normal family to spend a Saturday. Kipp tried pretending he was sick so he wouldn’t have to go, but his mother said, ‘Oh dear, perhaps we’d better take you to see Doctor Tillgang.’

  Now, I’m sure you’ll agree that some children have a fear of going to the doctor. I myself would rather be smeared in mashed banana and lowered into a cage full of hungry gorillas than visit my local doctor. But if you are a child living in Huggabie Falls and you are scared of going to the doctor, it is with very good reason. Huggabie Falls’ doctor, Doctor Terrence Tillgang, was not just a doctor, he was also a werewolf. As long as you didn’t visit him when there was a full moon you were generally okay, but it was always a good idea to keep your pockets full of silver bullets just in case. And even if it wasn’t a full moon you were still likely to leave Doctor Tillgang’s surgery covered in bite marks and, if he happens to be moulting, wolf hair.

  So, even though Kipp desperately wanted to investigate the extremely weird thing that had happened, he didn’t want to go see Doctor Tillgang even more, so he was forced to make an immediate recovery from his fake illness.

  Kipp tried to ring Tobias all morning, but the phone at the Treachery house was engaged, which wasn’t unusual—the Treachery family so often had people ringing them requesting they repay their debts that Tobias’s mum would regularly take the phone off the hook. Strangely, Kipp couldn’t reach Cymphany by phone either, and Kipp couldn’t reach Tobias or Cymphany on Sunday either. Which I, as storyteller, agree is quite odd. Not as odd as mismatched socks, but odd nonetheless.

  On Sunday, Kipp’s parents took him tenpin bowling. At the bowling alley Kipp wasn’t even tempted to play Super Outlaw Gunmen—he was too preoccupied thinking about the extremely weird thing that had happened, and his extremely normal family.

  Afterwards the Kindle family went to see the movie The Pirate King at the Huggabie Falls cinemaplex. As Kipp lined up at the candy bar to pay for his popcorn he saw Mr Haurik in a neighbouring line, holding a chocolate bar and a giant cola. Mr Haurik no longer had his wooden leg—he now had a new artificial limb that looked just like a normal leg—and he was without his parrot and his eye patch and, strangest of all, he was wearing a suit. Kipp left his line and went over to Mr Haurik’s line.

  ‘Mr Haurik?’ said Kipp, as if to say, Mr Haurik, is that really you?

  Mr Haurik looked down. ‘Hello there, Kipp. Fancy meeting you here. Are you going to see The Pirate King? I’ve heard it’s an excellent movie.’

  ‘But, Mr Haurik, you hate pirates! Why would you be going to see a movie about them?’

  ‘Hate pirates?’ Mr Haurik didn’t seem to understand. ‘It’s funny you should say that, because just this morning, as I was looking at myself in the mirror, I realised that the way I was dressed was a bit ridiculous—in fact, I looked a bit like a pirate myself.’

  ‘I see,’ said Kipp. ‘And you just noticed that this morning?’

  ‘I also sold my caravan,’ Mr Haurik announced.

  ‘Sold your caravan!’ Kipp yelped, as if to say, but we love that caravan—it’s what makes you Mr Haurik.

  ‘Yes, well, it was a bit outrageous, wasn’t it? A bit…what’s the word?’

  Kipp sighed. ‘Weird?’

  ‘Yes, weird.’ Mr Haurik smiled. ‘And I don’t want to be weird, do I? I think I’m going to buy a nice normal house and become an accountant, which unfortunately means you children won’t be able to visit me anymore, as I’ll be too busy calculating people’s taxes, wearing suits and doing whatever else it is that accountants do.’

  ‘Excuse me, youngster, do you want to pay for your popcorn?’ said a cinema attendant. Kipp realised they had got to the front of Mr Haurik’s line.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Kipp. ‘I think I’ve lost my appetite.’

  Kipp didn’t sleep at all that night, and the next morning he was an hour early for school. He was quite annoyed when Tobias and Cymphany arrived.

  ‘Hello, at last,’ Kipp said sharply. ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all weekend. What happened to you guys? You’ll never believe what happened to Mr Haurik.’ And Kipp told them all about his encounter with Mr Haurik at the cinemaplex.

  Cymphany apologised for being unreachable over the weekend. ‘My days were jam-packed,’ she explained.

  When someone uses the expression their days were ‘jam-packed’, they are usually referring to the fact that their days were very busy. But as Cymphany explained to Tobias and Kipp, when she used the expression jam-packed she was actually referring to the fact that her days were packed with jam. She had woken up on Saturday morning to find her living room full to the cei
ling with boxes, all of them filled with jars of jam. Her dad was unpacking them and smiling broadly. ‘I’ve started a great new job at the jam factory,’ he announced. ‘One bonus is we get all the free jam we like. So I’ve brought home a hundred boxes.’

  ‘So,’ Cymphany said. ‘For breakfast I had jam on my porridge, followed by jam on toast. For lunch we had a jam pie, followed by scones with jam and cream. And for dinner we had chicken with jam sauce and then for dessert we just had jam—we ate it straight out of the jar with spoons. Dad started wondering what we should do with all the leftover jam containers. So he built us a new letterbox out of them. He thought it looked cool.’ Cymphany rolled her eyes.

  ‘Then Dad was saying he could build other stuff out of the empty jam jars. He has already built a kennel for Patches and a new fence at the front of our house, and he has started building us a second carport. He reckons just another hundred boxes of jam and it will be all finished.’

  ‘Yum,’ said Tobias. ‘You’re lucky. I love jam.’

  Cymphany glared at him. ‘We’ve become known on our street as those weird jam people. And, well, jam is okay for a treat, but I am so sick of jam, now. I made sure that I got out of the house early this morning because Dad said he was making a jam omelette. Blegh!’ Cymphany stuck out her tongue and screwed up her face to show how much the thought of jam omelettes disgusted her, in case the word blegh had not been convincing enough.

  ‘Well,’ said Tobias. ‘That’s nothing. Wait until you hear about my weekend. On Saturday, my parents won the lottery, and my father paid off all his debts, so we no longer have debt collectors knocking on our door all day and night. My parents have pulled all the boards off our windows and our house looks totally normal now. And, for the first time ever, my sister and I could play in the backyard without having to worry about the neighbours throwing rotten fruit at us. We had a big party on Saturday night, and all our neighbours came over. Now, people like my parents so much that they’re telling my father he should run for mayor of Huggabie Falls. Have you ever heard anything so bizarre? My father, the most disliked man in all of Huggabie Falls, and now they want him to be the mayor!’