3
The next day Pete and I started at Allansford School. It was even worse than we thought it would be. The red-haired kid was waiting at the gate with his tough mates. ‘Here they are,’ he yelled with glee. ‘The twins from the tip.’ In a loud voice he started to tell everyone about Dad and the naked shop dummy. Pete and I looked at each other helplessly. We couldn’t deny the story. It was true. I could feel tears starting to form behind my eyes. I had to stop them escaping so I blinked real hard. I noticed that Pete was doing the same thing.
It is bad enough starting a new school at the best of times. But when you have to live down something like this it is just terrible. Fortunately the bell went and we had to go inside.
At recess time, though, it was even worse. ‘I’m the top dog here,’ said the red-haired boy. His name was James Gribble. He pushed Pete in the chest. ‘What’s your name, kid?’ he asked roughly.
‘Pete.’
Gribble gave a twisted grin. ‘This twin is Pete, so this one,’ he said, pointing at me, ‘must be Repeat. Pete and Repeat, the scabby twins from the tip.’ All the kids started to laugh. Some of them weren’t laughing too loudly though. I could see that they didn’t like Gribble much but they were too scared of him to do anything.
After the laughter died down Gribble went and fetched a shoebox with a small hole in the end. ‘I’m the boss here,’ he said. ‘Every new kid has to take my nerve test. If you pass the nerve test, you are okay. If you won’t do it, I thump you every day until you do.’ He held up a clenched fist. The kids all crowded around to see what would happen.
The shoebox had a lid which was tied on with string. Gribble pushed the box into my hand. ‘Seeing you like the tip so much, Repeat,’ he leered. ‘I have brought something back from there for you. One of you two has to have enough nerve to put your hand in there and take out the mystery object that I found at the tip.’
Pete and I looked at the hole in the box. There was just room enough to put a hand inside.
‘Go on,’ said Gribble. ‘Or you get your first thump now.’
I don’t mind telling you that I was scared. There was something in the box from the tip. It could be anything. A dead rat. Or even worse: a live rat. Or maybe a loaded mouse trap. My mind thought of the most terrible things. I didn’t want to do it but then I noticed one of the kids was nodding to me. A little kid with a kind face. He seemed to be telling me that it was okay.
I looked at Gribble. I have always heard that you should fight a bully when they first pick on you. Then if you fight hard and hurt them they will leave you alone. Even if you lose the fight everyone will respect you and it will be okay. I sighed. Gribble was twice as big as Pete and me put together. And he had tough mates. They would wipe the floor with both of us. Things like teaching the bully a lesson only happen on TV.
Slowly I pushed my hand into the box. At first I couldn’t feel anything but then I touched something hard and slimy. It was sort of horseshoe shaped. I shivered. It was revolting. There were rows of little sharp pointed things. Then I felt another one the same. There were two of them. They reminded me of a broken rabbit trap. They felt like they were made of plastic covered in dry mould. I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was holding, but all sorts of horrible things came into my mind.
Slowly I pulled out my hand and looked. It was a set of old, broken false teeth.
They were chipped and cracked and stained brown. They felt yucky but I smiled at the circle of kids around me. Pete was grinning too. I had passed the nerve test. Or so I thought.
‘Okay, Repeat,’ said Gribble with a horrible leer. ‘You have passed the first bit of the test.’ My heart sank. So did Pete’s. I didn’t realise that there was going to be something else.
Gribble pushed his face up against mine. He had bad breath. ‘Now boys,’ he growled, ‘you have to take the false teeth back where they came from. Back to the tip.’ He paused, and then he added, ‘At night.’
Pete and I looked at each other. Goose bumps ran up and down our arms. Before we could say anything Gribble told us the next bit. ‘And just to make sure that you really go. That you don’t just pretend to go. You have to bring something back with you. You have to bring back the steer’s skull in the middle of the tip pond. By tomorrow morning. You have to prove that you went to the tip at night by bringing back the skull.’
Pete and I spent the rest of the day worrying. We couldn’t concentrate on our school work. I got two out of twenty for my Maths. Pete got four out of twenty. The teacher must have thought that the new kids were real dumb.
That afternoon the boy who had nodded at me in the yard passed me a note. It said:
You had better get the skull. Gribble is real mean. He punched me up every day for a month until I passed his rotten nerve test.
Signed, your friend Troy
I passed the note on to Pete. He didn’t say anything but he didn’t look too good.
After school we walked sadly out of the gate. As we went Gribble yelled at us, ‘Have a nice night, my darlings.’
Neither of us could eat any tea that night. Mum looked at us in a funny way but she didn’t say anything. She thought we were just suffering from nerves about the new school. She was right. But only partly. We were also thinking about the ghost of Old Man Chompers and his lonely search for his lost darlings. I looked at Pete and he looked at me. It was like staring in a mirror. It reminded me that Old Man Chompers’ lost grandchildren were twins too.
‘We could pretend to be sick tomorrow,’ I said to Pete after tea.
‘It wouldn’t work,’ he answered. ‘Mum never gets fooled by that one. Anyway, we would have to go back to school sooner or later.’
‘We could tell Dad and …’
‘Oh sure,’ put in Pete before I could finish. ‘And he will tell the teachers and everyone in the school will call us dobbers.’
‘What about throwing the false teeth in the bin and getting a steer’s skull from somewhere else?’ I yelled. ‘Gribble would never know that we hadn’t really been to the tip.’
Pete looked at me as if I was a bit crazy. ‘Great,’ he answered in a cross voice. ‘And where are you going to get a steer’s skull at this time of night? It can’t be any old steer’s skull you know. It has to have white horns and horrible teeth. No – we will have to do it. We will take the false teeth back to the tip and bring the steer’s skull back with us. There’s nothing to be scared of really. Ghosts aren’t true. There aren’t any ghosts. People just think they see them when they are scared.’
I nodded my head without saying anything. I was scared already. And I didn’t even want to think that I saw a ghost. But I knew Pete was right. We would have to go. It was the only way.
4
That night after Mum and Dad had gone to bed we snuck out of the window and headed off for the tip. We walked slowly along the dusty road which wound through the moonlit paddocks. Pete carried a rope with a hook on the end for getting the skull out of the middle of the pond. I carried a torch in one hand and the false teeth in the other. They felt all slimy and horrible. I sure was looking forward to getting rid of them.
There was not a soul to be seen. The crickets were chirping their heads off and now and then an owl would hoot. Cows sat silently in the dry grass on the other side of the barbed-wire fences. I was really scared but for some reason the cows made me feel a little better. I don’t know why this was, because if anything happened the cows weren’t going to help. A cow is just a cow.
The further we got from home the more my knees started to wobble. I kept thinking that every shadow hid something evil and terrible. The inside of my stomach wall felt like a frog was scribbling on it with four pencils.
Our first problem started when we reached the tip. It had a high wire fence around it with barbed wire on the top. And the gates were locked. A gentle wind was blowing and the papers stuck to the fence flapped and sighed.
‘How are we going to get in?’ I asked Pete. Secretly I was hoping w
e would have to go home.
‘Climb over,’ he said.
We threw over the rope with the hook on it and clambered up the high wire fence. The wire was saggy and it started to sway from side to side with our weight. We ended up perched on the top trying to get our legs over the barbed wire. Suddenly the whole fence lurched, sending us crashing onto the ground on the inside. The fence sprang back up again with the rope on the other side.
‘Ouch, ow, ooh … that hurt,’ I yelled. I rubbed my aching head.
‘Quiet,’ whispered Pete fiercely. ‘You’re making enough noise to wake the dead.’
His words sent a chill up my spine. ‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ I whispered back.
Pete looked up at the fence. We were trapped inside. ‘We will never get back over that,’ he said. I could tell that he was thinking the same thing as me. What fools we were. What were we doing in a lonely tip in the middle of the night? There was no one to help us. There was not another soul there. Or was there?
A little way off, behind some old rusting car bodies, I thought I heard a noise. Pete was looking in the same direction. I was too terrified to move. I wanted to run but my legs just wouldn’t work. I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out. Pete stood staring as if he was bolted to the ground.
It was a rustling, tapping noise. It sounded like someone digging around in the junk, turning things over. It was coming in our direction. I just stood there pretending to be a dead tree or a post. I wished the moon would go in and stop shining on my white face. The tapping grew louder. It was coming closer.
And then we saw it. Or him. Or whatever it was. An old man, with a battered hat. He was poking the ground with a bent stick. He was rustling in the rubbish. He came on slowly. He was limping. He was bent and seemed to be holding his old, dirty trousers up with one hand. He came towards us. With a terrible shuffle.
Pete and I both noticed it at the same time. His feet weren’t touching the ground. He was moving across the rubbish about thirty centimetres above the surface.
It was the ghost of Old Man Chompers.
We both screeched the same word at exactly the same moment. ‘Run.’
And did we run. We tore through the waist-high rubbish. Scrambling. Screaming. Scrabbling. Not noticing the waves of silent rats slithering out of our way. Not feeling the scratches of dumped junk. Not daring to turn and snatch a stare at the horrible spectre who hobbled behind us.
Finally, with bursting lungs, we crawled into the back of an old car. It had no doors or windows so we crouched low, not breathing, not looking, not even hoping.
Why had we come to this awful place? Fools, fools, fools. Suddenly the thought of Gribble and the steer’s skull and the false teeth seemed stupid. I would have fought a thousand Gribbles rather than be here. Trapped in a tip with a ghost.
I could feel Pete trembling beside me. And I could hear the voice of someone else. A creaking, croaking cry. ‘My darlings … my darlings … my darlings … my darlings.’
5
I knew it. I just knew it. The ghost of Old Man Chompers had seen us. He thought we were his lost darlings. His dead grandchildren. He was coming to get us. Then he would be able to leave this place. And take us with him. To that great ghost tip in the sky.
I thought of Mum and Dad. I thought of my nice warm bed. I would never see them again. Our parents would never know what had happened to us. Never know that we had come to our end in the bowels of the Allansford tip.
‘At last, at last … my darlings … at last.’ The wailing voice was nearby. He knew where we were. Without a word we bolted out of the car. We fled blindly across the festering tip until we reached the pond. The deep black pond, filled with floating foulness.
And behind, slowly hobbling above the bile, came the searching figure of Old Chompers. We were trapped against the edge of the pond.
In panic we looked around for escape. Mountains of junk loomed over us on either side. To the back was the pond and to the front … we dared not look.
‘Quick,’ yelled Pete. ‘Help me with this.’ He was pulling at an old rusty bath. Dragging it towards the water.
‘It won’t float,’ I gasped. ‘Look at the plughole. The water will get in. It’ll sink.’
Pete bent down and scratched up a dollop of wet clay from the edge of the water. He jammed it into the plughole. ‘Come on,’ he panted. ‘Hurry.’
The bath was heavy but terror made us strong. We launched it out into the murky water. Then we scrambled in. Just in time. The bath rocked dangerously from side to side but slowly it floated away from the approaching horror.
We paddled frantically with our hands until the bath reached the middle of the pond. Then we stopped and stared at Old Chompers. He hobbled to the edge of the water, he staggered towards us. He was walking on the water, his hands outstretched. ‘My darlings,’ he groaned. ‘My long-lost darlings.’ Pete and I clung to the sides of the bath with frozen fingers.
The moon went in and everything was black.
Suddenly there was a pop. The clay plug shot into the air followed by a spout of water. Brown wetness swirled in the bath. We were sinking. In a flash we found ourselves swimming in the filthy water. We both headed for the shore, splashing and shouting and struggling. Pete was a better swimmer than me. He disappeared into the gloom.
My jumper soaked up water and dragged me down. I went under. I came up again and spat out the lumpy brown liquid. I knew I would drown unless I could find something to grab onto. The bath was gone.
Then my hand touched something. It was a post with something on the end. I grabbed onto it and kicked towards the shore. As my feet touched the bottom I realised that the post had horns. Then I saw that it had a face. A staring dead face with sharp teeth. It was the horrible leering steer’s skull.
I screamed and crawled over to where Pete lay on the shore.
We were both soaked to the skin. We were cold and exhausted. We were too tired to move.
The ghost of Old Man Chompers crept across the water with outstretched hands. His face was wrinkled like a bowl of hard, cold custard. His mouth was as a black hole, formed in the custard by a vanished golf ball. He chuckled as he looked at me.
In my left hand I still had the false teeth. All the time I had been running I had held onto them. I had no other weapon so I held them out in front of me. My fingers were shaking so much that it made them chatter.
As the ghost of Old Man Chompers jumped at me I screamed and screamed and tried to push him off with the teeth.
He grabbed the false teeth from my quivering fingers and shoved them into his mouth. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘I’ve found them. My darlings. My darlings.’ He opened and closed his mouth with joy, making sucking noises as he did it.
After a bit of this he pulled out a ghostly apple from his pocket and started to chomp on it. ‘Wonderful,’ he cackled. ‘Wonderful. You don’t know what it was like without my darlings … I owe you boys a big favour for bringing these back.’
We both lay there looking at the grinning ghost. Suddenly he didn’t seem so scary. Pete found his voice first. ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that your darlings are your false teeth? Not your long-lost grandchildren?’
The ghost started to cackle even more. ‘Them,’ he said. ‘Them brats. What would I want them for? I told ’em not to play around here. Told ’em it was dangerous. No, I was lookin’ for these.’ He smacked his lips again and showed the cracked brown teeth. ‘Couldn’t leave without these. Been lookin’ for ’em for years. Now I can go. Now I can leave this rotten dump and join all the others.’ As he said this he started to fade away. I knew that we would never see him again.
‘Wait,’ yelled Pete. ‘Don’t go. Come back.’
Chompers stopped fading and looked at Pete. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What do yer want?’ I could see that he was in a hurry. He didn’t want to hang around the tip for any longer than he had to.
Pete looked the ghost straight in the eye. ‘You said that you owe us a big
favour for bringing your teeth back. Well we want to be paid back. We want one favour before you go.’
‘Well,’ said Old Chompers with a chipped smile, ‘what is it?’
6
Old Chompers wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to hang around that tip. He showed us a hole in the fence and we ran back down that road as fast as we could go. When we got back to Allansford we climbed up a certain tree and looked in a certain window.
Gribble was fast asleep in bed. He had a big smile on his face. He had fallen asleep thinking about how smart he was making those dumb twins go to the tip in the middle of the night.
Suddenly he was awakened by a noise. It sounded like a person tapping with a stick. It was coming towards his window. Then he heard a croaky voice. ‘My darling,’ it said. ‘At last I’ve found my darling.’
Gribble was terrified. He wanted to scream but nothing would come out.
A terrible figure floated through the wall. He had a face which was wrinkled like a bowl of hard, cold custard. His mouth was as a black hole, formed in the custard by a vanished golf ball. And in that black hole was a pair of cracked old false teeth.
The ghost chuckled as he held the horrible skull over Gribble’s head. ‘I think you wanted this,’ he said as he dropped his load on Gribble’s face.
‘That was from Pete,’ he screeched. ‘And this,’ he yelled picking it up again, ‘is a Repeat.’
Gribble didn’t feel the steer’s skull the second time. Nor did he see the ghost fade away. He had fainted.
The next day at school, though, James Gribble was very nice to me and Pete. I had never met a more polite boy. And there is one thing I can tell you for a fact – he never mentioned anything about being the top dog ever again.
I was rapt. It was the best day of my life. I had asked Fiona to go with me and she said yes. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, it wasn’t as if I was a great catch. I was skinny, weak, and not too smart at school. Mostly I got Cs and Ds for marks. And I couldn’t play sport at all. I hated football, always went out on the first ball at cricket and didn’t know which end to hold a tennis racquet. And Fiona had said she’d be my girlfriend.
Paul Jenning's Spookiest Stories Page 13