Paul Jenning's Spookiest Stories

by Paul Jennings

  ‘Hey, did you see that?’ yelled Tracy without warning. ‘Where did that crust go?’

  ‘What crust?’

  ‘I threw a crust to the seagulls and it vanished.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Gemma. ‘One of the birds got it. Bread doesn’t just vanish.’

  Tracy threw another scrap of bread into the air. It started to fall to the ground and then stopped as if caught by an invisible hand. It rose high above their heads, turned and headed off into the distance. All the other gulls flapped after it, squawking and quarrelling as they went.

  ‘Wow,’ shrieked Gemma. ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Tracy slowly. ‘Something flew off with it. Something we couldn’t see. Something invisible. Perhaps a bird.’

  Gemma started to laugh. ‘A ghost gull maybe?’

  ‘That’s not as funny as you think,’ said Tracy. ‘It’s a sign. Something or Someone wants us to go to Seagull Shack.’

  ‘Maybe you’ve got it wrong,’ replied Gemma. ‘Maybe something doesn’t want us to go to Seagull Shack.’

  The wind suddenly changed to the south west and both girls shivered.

  2

  Two days later Tracy and Gemma struggled along the deserted and desolate clifftops. They were weighed down with hiking packs and water bottles. Far below them the Southern Ocean swelled and sucked at the rocky cliff. Overhead the blue sky was broken only by a tiny white seagull which circled slowly in the salt air.

  ‘How far to go?’ moaned Gemma. ‘My feet are killing me. We’ve been walking for hours.’

  ‘It’s not far now,’ said Tracy. ‘Just around the next headland. We should be able to see the old brown roof any moment … Hey, what was that?’ She felt her hair and pulled out some sticky, white goo. Then she looked up at the seagull circling above. ‘You rotten fink,’ she yelled at it. ‘Look at this. That seagull has hit me with bird droppings.’

  Gemma lay down on the grassy slope and started to laugh. ‘Imagine that,’ she gasped. ‘There are miles and miles of cliff top with no one around and that bird has to drop its dung right on your head.’ Her laughter stopped abruptly as something splotted into her eye. ‘Aaaaagh, it’s hit me in the eye. The stupid bird is bombing us.’

  They looked up and saw that there were now four or five birds circling above. One of them swooped down and released its load. Another white splodge hit Tracy’s head. The other birds followed one after the other, each dropping its foul load onto one of the girls’ hair. They put their hands on top of their heads and started to run. More and more birds gathered, circling, wheeling and diving above the fleeing figures. Bird droppings rained down like weighted snow.

  The girls stumbled on. There was no shelter on the exposed, wind-swept cliffs – there was no escape from the guano blizzard which engulfed them.

  Tracy stumbled and fell. Tears cut a trail through the white mess on her face. ‘Come on,’ cried Gemma. ‘Keep going – we must find cover.’ She dragged her sister to her feet and both girls groped their way through the white storm being released from above by the squealing, swirling gulls.

  Finally, exhausted and blinded, the twins collapsed into each other’s arms. They huddled together and tried to protect themselves from the pelting muck by holding their packs over their heads. Gemma began to cough. The white excrement filled her ears, eyes and nostrils. She had to fight for every breath.

  And then, as quickly as it had begun, the attack ended. The whole flock sped out to sea and disappeared over the horizon.

  The girls sat there panting and sobbing. Each was covered in a dripping, white layer of bird dung. Finally Gemma gasped. ‘I can’t believe this. Look at us. Covered in bird droppings. Did that really happen? Where have they gone?’ She looked anxiously out to sea.

  ‘They’ve probably run out of ammo,’ said Tracy. ‘We had better get to the shack as quick as we can before they come back.’

  3

  An hour later the two girls struggled up to the shack. It sat high above the sea, perched dangerously on the edge of a cliff which fell straight to the surging ocean beneath. Its battered tin roof and peeling, wooden walls stood defiantly against the might of the ocean winds.

  Both girls felt tears springing to their eyes. ‘It reminds me of Dad and all those fishing holidays we had here with him,’ said Tracy. They stood there on the old porch for a moment, looking and remembering.

  ‘This won’t do,’ said Gemma as she unlocked the door and pushed it open. ‘Let’s get cleaned up and start looking for those two rubies.’

  Inside was much as they remembered it. There were only two rooms: a kitchen with an old table and three chairs, and fishing rods and nets littered around; and a bedroom with three mattresses on the floor. The kitchen also contained a sink and an old sideboard with a huge, stuffed seagull standing on it. It had only one leg and a black patch on each wing. It stared out of one of the mist-covered windows at the sky and the waves beyond.

  ‘It almost looks alive,’ shivered Tracy. ‘Why did Dad shoot it anyway? He didn’t believe in killing birds.’

  ‘It was wounded,’ answered Gemma. ‘So he put it out of its misery. Then he stuffed it and mounted it because it was so big. He said it was the biggest gull he had ever seen.’

  ‘Well,’ said Tracy, ‘I’m glad you’re the one who is going to look inside it for the rubies, because I’m not going to touch it. I don’t like it.’

  ‘First,’ said Gemma, ‘we clean off all this muck. Then we start searching for the rubies.’ The two girls cleaned themselves with tank water from the tap in the sink. Then they sat down at the table and looked at the stuffed seagull. Gemma cut a small slit in its belly and carefully pulled out the stuffing. A silence fell over the hut and the cliff top. Not even the waves could be heard.

  The air seemed to be filled with silent sobbing.

  ‘The rubies aren’t there,’ said Gemma at last. She put the stuffing back in the dead bird and placed it on its stand. ‘I’m glad that’s over,’ she went on. ‘I didn’t like the feel of it. It gave me bad vibes.’

  As the lonely darkness settled on the shack, the girls continued their hunt for the rubies. They lit a candle and searched on into the night without success. At last, too tired to go on, Tracy unrolled her sleeping bag and prepared for bed. She walked over to the window to pull across the curtain but froze before reaching it. A piercing scream filled the shack. ‘Look,’ she shrieked. ‘Look.’

  Both girls stared in terror at the huge seagull sitting outside on the windowsill. It gazed in at them, blinking every now and then with fiery, red eyes. ‘I can see into it,’ whispered Gemma. ‘I can see its gizzards. It’s transparent.’

  The lonely bird stared, pleaded with them silently and then crouched on its single leg and flapped off into the moonlight.

  Before either girl could speak, a soft pitter-patter began on the tin roof. Soon it grew louder until the shack was filled with a tremendous drumming. ‘What a storm,’ yelled Gemma.

  ‘It’s not a storm,’ Tracy shouted back. ‘It’s the birds. The seagulls have returned. They are bombing the house.’ She stared in horror at the ghostly flock that filled the darkness with ghastly white rain.

  All through the night the drumming on the roof continued. Towards the dawn it grew softer but never for a moment did it stop. Finally the girls fell asleep, unable to keep their weary eyes open any longer.

  4

  At 10 a.m. Tracy awoke in the darkness and pressed on the light in her digital watch. ‘Wake up,’ she yelled. ‘It’s getting late.’

  ‘It can’t be,’ replied Gemma. ‘It’s still dark.’

  The shack was as silent as a tomb. Gemma lit a candle and went over to the window. ‘Can’t see a thing,’ she said.

  Tracy pulled open the front door and shrieked as a wave of bird droppings gushed into the room. It oozed into the kitchen in a foul stream. ‘Quick,’ she yelled. ‘Help me shut the door or we’ll be drowned in the stuff.’

  Staggering,
grunting and groaning, they managed to shut the door and stop the stinking flow. ‘The whole house is buried,’ said Gemma. ‘And so are we. Buried alive in bird droppings.’

  ‘And no one knows we are here,’ added Tracy.

  They sat and stared miserably at the flickering candle. All the windows were blacked out by the pile of dung that covered the house.

  ‘There is no way out,’ moaned Gemma.

  ‘Unless …’ murmured Tracy ‘they haven’t covered the chimney.’ She ran over to the fireplace and looked up. ‘I can see the sky,’ she exclaimed. ‘We can get up the chimney.’

  It took a lot of scrambling and shoving but at last the two girls sat perched on the top of the stone chimney. They stared in disbelief at the house, which was covered in a mountain of white bird droppings. The chimney was the only evidence that underneath the oozing pile was a building.

  ‘Look,’ said Gemma with outstretched hand. ‘The transparent gull.’ It sat, alone on the bleak cliff, staring, staring at the shaking twins. ‘It wants something,’ she said quietly.

  ‘And I know what it is,’ said Tracy. ‘Wait here.’ She eased herself back down the chimney and much later emerged carrying the stuffed seagull.

  ‘Look closely at that ghost gull,’ panted Tracy. ‘It’s only got one leg. And it has black patches on its wings. And look how big it is. It’s this bird.’ She held up the stuffed seagull. ‘It’s the ghost of this stuffed seagull. It wants its body back. It doesn’t like it being stuffed and left in a house. It wants it returned to nature.’

  ‘Okay,’ Gemma yelled at the staring gull. ‘You can have it. We don’t want it. But first we have to get down from here.’ The two girls slid, swam, and skidded their way to the bottom of the sticky mess. Then, like smelly, white spirits, the sisters walked to the edge of the cliff with the stuffed bird. The ghost seagull sat watching and waiting.

  Tracy pulled the stuffed seagull from the stand and threw it over the cliff into the air that it had once loved and lived in. Its wings opened in the breeze and it circled slowly, like a glider, and after many turns crashed on a rock in the surging swell beneath.

  The ghost gull lifted slowly into the air and followed it down until it came to rest on top of the still, stuffed corpse.

  ‘Look,’ whispered Tracy in horror. ‘The ghost gull is pecking at the stuffed one. It’s pecking its head.’

  A wave washed across the rock and the stuffed seagull vanished into the foam. The ghost gull flapped into the breeze and then flew above the girls’ heads. ‘It’s bombing us,’ shouted Gemma as she put her hands over her head.

  Two small shapes plopped onto the ground beside them.

  ‘It’s the eyes of the stuffed seagull,’ said Tracy in a hoarse voice.

  ‘No it’s not,’ replied Gemma. ‘It’s Dad’s rubies.’

  They sat there, stunned, saying nothing and staring at the red gems that lay at their feet.

  Tracy looked up. ‘Thank you, ghost gull,’ she shouted.

  But the bird had gone and her words fell into the empty sea below.

  See, this kid was hanging around outside the flower shop and Jenny (the shop assistant) thought he was a trouble maker. She reckoned he might be going to nick something. That’s why she called for me. I have a black belt in judo and if I do say so myself I am quite good in a fight.

  Not that I’m tough. No, generally I am as quiet as a lamb. I’m not big either. In fact a lot of people think I am about fourteen years old and they are amazed when I tell them I am really seventeen. I got the job at the flower shop because of my strength. They needed someone strong who could lump all the boxes around and lift heavy flower pots for Jenny. At first they didn’t want me on account of my size but when they saw what I could do they changed their minds and gave me the job.

  Anyway, to get back to the story. This kid (who looked about my age) really was acting strangely. He would peer into the shop looking at the flowers for sale. When anyone looked at him he sloped off down the street. About five minutes later, back he would come. This happened about twenty times. I should add that I thought I had seen him hanging around before. Perhaps on the train.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said to Jenny. ‘I’ll fix this weirdo up in no time at all.’ I walked out of the door and approached the boy who was acting so strangely. Straightaway he turned around and started to walk off.

  ‘Come back here,’ I ordered in my sternest voice. ‘I want to talk to you.’ He turned around and went red in the face. I could see that he was nervous. His knees were wobbling like jelly and he just stood there with his mouth dangling open.

  ‘What are you hanging around here for?’ I asked. I started to feel sorry for him, he looked so nervous, and I had a feeling that maybe he was a bit sweet on Jenny. I have to admit that she is the spunkiest girl in all of Melbourne and he wouldn’t have been the first one who fancied her.

  He seemed to have trouble talking. It was as if he was being strangled by invisible hands but finally he managed to gasp out the word ‘flowers’.

  I grabbed his arm firmly and led him in to the shop counter. ‘Here,’ I said, giving a wink to Jenny. ‘This gentleman wants flowers.’

  Jenny turned on her fatal smile and said in her sweetest voice, ‘What sort of flowers, sir?’

  I grinned to myself. She always called the shy ones ‘sir’. It made them feel better when they were embarrassed about buying flowers. The poor kid went even redder and looked around wildly. He obviously didn’t know a kangaroo paw from a carnation. ‘Roses,’ he blurted out, pointing to our most expensive line.

  I should tell you here what I found out later, at the funeral. This poor boy had twenty-six dollars in his pocket. Twenty of it was the change from his grandmother’s pension cheque and six of it was his own. His grandmother needed this money badly to buy her week’s groceries. Jenny looked at the roses. ‘A good choice,’ she said. ‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they? How many would you like?’

  Once again he struggled for words. ‘How much, er, well, I, you see.’ Boy, he was the shyest person I had ever seen. He just couldn’t seem to get anything out. Finally the words ‘one dozen’ managed to escape from his frozen mouth.

  Jenny started to wrap up the roses. She always goes to a lot of trouble to make them look good. She wraps the stems up in pretty paper and then she gets a long length of ribbon and ties a bow. Next she runs one of her long slender fingernails along the ends of the ribbon and they curl up like magic. I have tried to do this myself many times but it never works. Probably because I bite my fingernails.

  ‘Are they for your girlfriend?’ asked Jenny. She is a bit on the nosy side, is Jenny. The red-faced boy shook his head and looked at his shoes.

  ‘They are for a girl though, aren’t they?’

  He nodded unhappily.

  ‘Is this the first time you have given flowers to a girl?’ she asked gently.

  He nodded again and made a gurgling noise in his throat.

  ‘What shall I write on the card?’ I could see that Jenny felt sorry for this kid. She was trying to help him all she could. The poor thing couldn’t seem to talk at all. ‘What about your name?’ she suggested. ‘You will have to put who they are from.’

  ‘Gerald,’ he answered at last. ‘My … my name’s Gerald.’

  Jenny smiled. ‘And who are they for?’ she asked kindly.

  He didn’t know which leg to stand on. He was really embarrassed. He looked at me as if he wished I wasn’t there.

  ‘Go away,’ said Jenny. ‘You are embarrassing a customer.’

  She was the boss so I went up to the back of the shop and started stacking up some heavy concrete pots.

  Jenny wrote something on the card and tied it on to the ribbon. I snuck along behind a row of daffodils so that I could hear what happened. I really hoped that things would work out well for this shy boy.

  Jenny put the finishing touches to the bunch and passed over the flowers. ‘Now,’ she went on. ‘They are two dollars each. That will
be twenty-four dollars.’

  Forget about Gerald being red in the face before. That was nothing compared to what happened next. He went as red as the dozen bloomin’ roses he had just bought. This great wave of redness swept down from his ears, down his neck, and for all I know, right down to his toes.

  Jenny and I didn’t know what was the matter. It was only later I found out that he thought flowers were about two dollars a bunch at the most. He had got Jenny to wrap up the flowers and now he couldn’t ask her to take them back. He was too embarrassed. He pulled his grandmother’s pension money out of his pocket, looked at it frantically, then thrust it into Jenny’s hand. For a minute I thought he was going to say something to me. I tried to look as if I hadn’t been listening. He took a few steps towards me, then changing his mind, grabbed his change and fled out of the shop.

  ‘What a strange bloke,’ I said. ‘I bet we never see him again.’

  2

  I was wrong. Half an hour later he got into the same carriage as me on the train.

  I groaned. Not because of Gerald and his flowers but because Scouse the skinhead was in my carriage. He was a great big hulk of a bloke and he was real mean into the bargain. He liked nothing better than picking on anyone weak and giving them a hard time. He always caught the same train as me but usually I managed to get into another carriage. He looked at Gerald, gave a twisted sneer and then spat on the floor.

  Gerald was as red as ever and he stood with his back to the door, holding the flowers behind his back. He was trying to hide them from the other passengers. He didn’t want to be seen carrying flowers in the train. Every now and then he looked over at me in an agitated fashion.

  The train was one of those silver ones where the two doors slide automatically into the middle when they close. As the train lurched off they shut with a bang. Right on Gerald’s roses. He just stood there shivering and twitching and holding onto the stems with his hands behind his back as if nothing had happened. The stems were on the inside of the train and the flowers were on the outside.